Alumnus Eric Leroux ’06 could be considered an ideal Princeton student. Not because of his exceptional intelligence, although his senior thesis was voted the best in epidemiology. Nor because of his formidable athletic talent, though the hockey team twice named him team MVP. It's his knack for making the absolute most out of what Princeton has to offer.

Leroux hadn’t always wanted to be a doctor, but he was interested in world health issues. While at Princeton, he learned about the dozens of grants for short-term research in foreign countries offered by the University’s Study Abroad Program. Leroux applied for the grants and spent the summers of 2005 and 2006 shadowing doctors and assisting in clinics in Ecuador and Kenya, through funding from Princeton.

While in Ecuador, Leroux listened to the local physicians lament the lack of basic supplies in their rural clinics. Upon returning to Princeton for his senior year, Leroux knew just what to do. Princeton makes it easy to for students to start their own organizations, so Leroux was able to recruit some like-minded friends and found the Princeton World Health Initiative. The group visited local hospitals asking for any overstocked medical supplies, and ended up recovering $30,000 worth of stethoscopes, syringes and surgical tools that would otherwise have been discarded.

For Leroux, “This is a huge part of what makes Princeton what it is: giving students opportunities to pursue their passions and curiosity.”

Not all of that support comes solely from the administration through grants and fellowships. So much of his inspiration to follow his heart, Leroux says, came directly from faculty members, several of whom he counts among his good friends.

Leroux’s senior thesis adviser in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Andy Dobson, was one of his major influences. “He brought a real youthful enthusiasm to any idea that you had and any idea that he had,” says Leroux, “and was always chasing his curiosities and ideas in different directions.”

Inspired by Dobson’s work, Leroux applied for and won a $25,000 Princeton in Africa fellowship to spend his first year after college working for a private company in Cape Town, South Africa, developing treatment strategies for AIDS patients who have fallen through the cracks of the public and private health-care systems.

Leroux's Princeton in Africa fellowship continued through August 2007, and in 2008 he hopes to enroll in medical school.