Two ECU students receive David Hardee scholarships

East Carolina University students Ajlana Music and Emily Sinning were presentedDavid W. Hardee Scholarships by the Mental Health Association of Pitt County. Dr. Susan McCammon and Cassandra Campbell, co-chairwomen of the scholarship committee, presented the $500 awards at a Sept. 30 luncheon for the recipients. McCammon is an ECU professor of psychology, and Campbell is director of social work for Pitt County Schools.

“It is with pleasure that the Mental Health Association of Pitt County can help two bright and highly capable students continue their studies toward becoming mental health professionals in their respective fields,” McCammon said.

Music, a native of Bosnia who moved to Robersonville with her family when she was 14, is a doctoral student in the pediatric health psychology program. She holds a master's degree in psychology and has participated in numerous internships including the Brody Pediatric Outpatient Clinic, the Traumatic Brain Injury and Spinal Cord Injury Units at PCMH, and Greene County, Pitt County and Edgecombe county schools.

Sinning is a master's degree student in the School of Social Work. She earned a bachelor's degree in psychology, magna cum laude, in 2007. She has served as a Volunteer Crisis Counselor at REAL Crisis Center, is president of the ECU Graduate Association of Social Workers, spent a year in community development in New Zealand and was inducted in the National Scholars Honor Society in the spring of 2008.

The scholarship fund was established in 1963 in memory of David W. Hardee, a Pitt County native who was a tireless advocate for people experiencing mental illnesses and the first North Carolinian to serve on the board of directors of the National Association for Mental Health (now Mental Health America).