When Lucy Selby ’24 started applying to colleges, Guilford was first on her list. A New Hampshire native, she knew she wanted to go to school somewhere in the South, and she was familiar with Guilford College because her mother was an alum. But even more important was the social justice program offered at Guilford.

Lucy knew from a young age she wanted to pursue a career in social work. When she was 11, her parents started the process of adopting a child from Congo and allowed her to be part of the process. “I saw first-hand the complexities of international adoptions and how instrumental social workers were,” Lucy says. “It made me realize I wanted to do something like that, where I could have an impact on someone’s life.”

Lucy will graduate with majors in Community and Justice Studies, and Sociology and Anthropology. Her professors helped push her to think from new perspectives and then apply that learning outside of class. In addition to the academic experiences, Lucy worked at an internship during the spring of her junior year with the North Carolina African Services Coalition (NCASC). The national resettlement organization with offices in Greensboro provided Lucy with valuable experience working directly with clients, helping them apply for jobs, apply for housing, make medical appointments and fill out paperwork for government-assistance  programs.

“It was really great for me to be able to see first-hand what types of things I could be doing in a work environment,” Lucy says. “I gained valuable experience not only helping others but also learning what working in an office is like and developing relationships with co-workers."

After graduating, Lucy plans to attend the University of North Carolina at Charlotte for a master’s degree in social work. As she embarks on the next step of her career plan, she knows she is well prepared thanks to Guilford.

“I’ve really appreciated the opportunity to participate in multiple research projects, which I feel is unique in an undergraduate program,” Lucy says. One of those was her capstone project, where she and a team of students and professors worked to create an open-access, online manual for Guilford’s Every Campus a Refuge, which helps settle refugees in the community. “I feel like the experience of presenting at conferences, networking and developing relationships with people from other schools has prepared me well for the work I will do in graduate school.”