An Interview

with

Evian Patterson (’98)

Evian Patterson (’98) shared these reflections on Carolina Friends School and his life and work in a recent conversation with Alumni Coordinator, John Ladd.

What are you doing now?

I’m at NYU earning a masters at the Wagner School of Public Service. NYU is rigorous: lots of economics, math, and capital management.

I see a need to help developing countries improve their civil service sector. There’s a big gap in their being able to provide even basic services to their citizens.

A lot of agencies go to villages and build a water system or a clinic and leave. I want to look at the bigger picture and train people to manage the infrastructure and strengthen the leadership in the country.

A lot [of my peers] don’t want to work with the governments themselves because so often funds have been mismanaged…. There are a few of us who are looking at that reform side--to build on the strengths they’ve got in place and help them add what they need. How long did you attend CFS? I was in Early School at CFS and then I went to a public school. I returned

to CFS for first year of Middle School and stayed through graduation in 1998.

Coming to CFS in fifth grade was the pivotal moment in my life. It’s when I learned to be proud of being an African American, and to be proud to be unique and different and not just because of my skin color.

I learned that I brought diversity not just because of being African American but because of the unique person I was.

Pat Dalton [Middle School head teacher] was like a second mother. She believed in me, unlike some of my public school teachers. She worked with me to get ahead by my own volition, not just by passing a test. She saw unique qualities that she helped flesh out in me. I worked hard; with Pat it was tough love.

What teachers do you remember?

There are so many I could talk about. That’s one of the things we [alumni] love about Friends School: you create such relationships with your teachers.

Bryce Little (Upper School) comes to mind…. He let me do an independent study on Reconstruction and W.E.B Du Bois and the Talented Tenth. This was my real introduction to scholarship and research: two of the things I discovered I like most to do.

Bryce’s course helped me understand myself as an African American. And it helped me be a leader who could go out and tell people about this story and why it was important-- to be a resource for others.

Then college?

I went to UNC-Wilmington, graduating in 2002. I majored in philosophy and religion focusing on Islam with a minor in Middle Eastern Studies. I took a lot of science classes, but I enjoyed the critical thinking of philosophy and religion studies.

How well were you prepared for a pretty large university after a smaller school like CFS?

What set me apart in college was that I knew how to learn, how to think critically. I knew how to do more than get good grades, which I did. But grades didn’t matter to me as much. What mattered was what I was going to learn from the class.

Friends School evaluations show you your weaknesses. And the teachers help you learn what you need to overcome them. So, in college, you go to our professors and ask, “What do I need to do to be better. “

Most of my friends from CFS were very strong students in college. When you apply that passion for learning from CFS and you want to know what you need to do to get better--that sets you apart from a lot of others. We tend to put more into it than most other students.

Students leave CFS with a passion for life and a passion for learning and an idea of how you fit in the world. A lot of high school students don’t get a sense of that.

You won a Fulbright Scholarship. What was most rewarding about that?

I spent the Fulbright studying in Cairo, Egypt. My favorite part was helping prepare Egyptian students who were going to America. Like me, they wanted to go to another country to learn and to be ambassadors for their country.

After the Fulbright?

I got a job at the Academy for Educational Development (AED), a $400 million international nonprofit. I first worked on a scholarship program for Palestinians in the west bank and Gaza. Then I worked on a project with the Egyptian government. We brought education ministers, civil servants, teachers, and administrators to the US and provided training to help them completely restructure their education system.

At AED, I found I wanted to go back overseas to do this kind of work in developing countries. To get the kind of job I want, I decided to go to grad school. That’s how I ended up at NYU.

I feel like I’m in the right spot. I’m doing what I really want to do.

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The “Talented Tenth” is an essay by W. E. B. Du Bois. It proposes that  equality  can be achieved by securing college education for the most talented African Americans.

To read the original essay, click here......

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Eric Garner ('80) is making a difference in our environment and in preserving our water resources. To read more, click here....

This interview with Evian originally appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of "We & Thee." To read the whole issue, click here.....