The Wilmington Fellows are Honors College students who work with campus administrators and offices to pursue major national postgraduate fellowships, scholarships, attend graduate schools and fulfilling professional careers.
Sarah Bischoff majored in Elementary Education with a concentration in English as a Second Language. Sarah has a special interest in working with immigrant students and students who are not fluent in English.
She served as a volunteer to the ESL population of Williston Middle School in downtown Wilmington. She taught internationally after graduation and pursued her goal of helping children around the globe enjoy learning.
In May 2016, Sarah traveled to Finland and Sweden through the Watson Student Leaders Honorary Program to learn about their school systems. She will be traveling to Ethiopia in December 2017 to study English language acquisition and work on her honors thesis with Dr. Parker.
She worked for Housing and Residence Life as a Resident Assistant in Tri-House, and in her free time, Sarah enjoys baking extra-chocolaty cookies, collecting seashells and just being around others.
Caleb Horowitz was born and raised in Cary, North Carolina, where he grew up reading and writing as much as possible. Caleb chose to come to UNCW because of its excellent creative writing program, and he is double majoring in English and Creative Writing.
Caleb completed the BA/MA program in the English department at UNCW, graduating in 5 years with his master's degree. His dream is to work as an English or writing professor while writing his own works of fiction.
Caleb was the secretary of UNCW’s Writers’ Association and the Editor-in-Chief of its honors literary magazine, Second Story Journal. Caleb is a big fan of The Lord of the Rings, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and The Legend of Zelda. His greatest desire is to become a novelist.
Nikki Kroushl grew up in Clayton, NC and chose UNCW because it felt like home. Nikki was a Creative Writing and Communication Studies double major with minors in English and German, also pursuing the Certificate in Publishing.
She was copy editor for Atlantis and editor-in-chief of Periplus, the Honors College newsletter. She completed several internships, but the coolest was in Summer 2018 when she moved to New York City to work for Macmillan Publishers. She received the 2018 NC College Media Association's 1st prize for fiction.
She held leadership positions in Student Ambassadors and Catholic Campus Ministry. The research that became her honors thesis began in Fall 2017, when she analyzed the comic book Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. With guidance from Dr. Anita McDaniel, she presented that research at Comic-Con 2018 and the annual National Collegiate Honors Council conference in November 2018.
For her thesis, she analyzed the Netflix adaptation of the comic and the portrayal of women, witchcraft, and Christian fundamentalism in media.
Erik Paulson from is Wilmington, North Carolina, so living near the ocean has played an important role shaping his interests and values. He loves to learn and to surf.
Going to college in his hometown was an obvious choice with UNCW’s strong Marine Biology program and a community that collectively strives to succeed. Erik majored in Marine Biology and minored in Chemistry, and he followed graduation at UNCW by entering the master's program in chemistry at UNCW.
Erik has been involved in undergraduate research in both the Chemistry and Marine Biology departments. Through these opportunities, he helped to investigate cognitive load in organic chemistry students based on fluctuations in heart rate as well as the relationship between metabolic rate and membrane lipid content in various marine species. His Honors thesis studied differences between red and white muscle in pinfish with Dr. Kinsey.
Aside from research, Erik was involved as a Wilmington Fellows Class Representative and Treasurer of the Surf Club.
Nicole Webster grew up just north of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She chose to attend UNCW not only for its ideal coastal location, but also because of its undergraduate marine biology program. While the Ohio River may be great for water skiing, it offers little to the study of the ocean and its inhabitants.
Nicole double majored in Marine Biology and Oceanography with the intention of pursuing graduate studies pertaining to marine conservation and environmental education. She was involved in undergraduate research since the beginning of her sophomore year and completed multiple DIS projects on the topics of animal behavior and Ecuadorian mammal diversity.
In her spare time, Nicole enjoys painting and photography.
Hannah was born in Southern California, where she learned to love the ocean and found herself on a fast track to marine research.
2009 witnessed a relocation to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where her family spent four years working with HOPE Worldwide at the Sihanouk Hospital, after which they moved to NC. She spent her Spring 2017 semester studying Marine Biology at the University of Southampton in England.
Hannah split her time in undergrad between church ministry, research, athletics, writing, and as a STEM Peer Mentor. She hoped to pursue a career in coral reef conservation research and teaching marine science at the college level, as well as kindling community interest in the marine environment.
Juliet, or Jules, hails from the DC-Maryland line. From years competing and arguing with her five older siblings, she discovered she had a penchant for law and as a DC native set her sights on working for the FBI as a special agent (which she achieved, joining the FBI as an Operations Analyst in 2019 following graduation).
At UNCW, she double majored in Criminology and Psychology with minors in Neuroscience and Arabic and was a member of Omicron Delta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Alpha Phi Sigma and Phi Eta Sigma Honors Societies.
She further pursued Arabic and two other languages through study abroad in Morocco in 2017. On campus, Jules gave tours and founded a career event series called Hawktalks as Vice President of Student Ambassadors, tutored at the ULC and danced with Ritmo Latino, UNCW's Latin dance team.
She also enjoyed volunteering on an on-campus State department grant project as well as working at her internship with the federal government. In her free time, she loved to travel and try new things as well as hang out on Wrightsville Beach with her friends.
Sydney Stark was born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She developed a love for the ocean early on in life from traveling to the beach almost every weekend. UNCW was her number one choice because of the excellent marine biology program and its proximity to the beach.
She pursued a B.S. in Marine Biology and minor in Psychology. She plans to go to graduate school and study behavior in marine animals in the hopes of furthering conservation, and she spent Fall 2016 in Australia.
Apria was born and raised in Chester, New Jersey. Ever since she was young, she had a passion for science and the natural world. She developed a deep love for the ocean and for marine life and decided to dedicate her life to Marine Biology and research.
Apria chose UNCW because it has one of the top Marine Biology programs in the nation. She was also extremely passionate about being part of the Honors College, because more research opportunities means more time learning and working toward her goals. Her ultimate goal is to be a professor, back here at UNCW one day, and conduct research on sharks.
She spent Summer 2018 at UNCW on a SURCA grant to continue working on her Honors thesis in Dr. Frederick Scharf’s Fisheries Biology lab, studying the growth variability of young-of-the-year juvenile flounder in the Cape Fear River. Apria was also working with MarineQuest as an RA for the Oceans 17 camp.
After graduation in Spring 2019, Apria moved to Corpus Christi, Texas to attend graduate school for marine science.