Meet an Interdisciplinary Maximalist

Image

When Duke senior Will Lieber logs on for our Zoom interview, he’s just back from San Antonio, where he watched his first Final Four game. “It stinks we lost,” he says, “but being there with my friends made it better — and now I can check that off my bucket list.”

He’s squeezing this conversation in between final papers, thesis work and end-of-year events.

“It’s a busy time,” he notes. “Senior spring is a good kind of busy. It's like very maximalist — maximum fun, maximum work, maximum everything.”

I soon find out this “maximalist” approach of making the most out of every opportunity has been a hallmark of his deeply interdisciplinary Duke experience.

An Interest in Linguistics and Incarceration Studies

Lieber transferred to Duke as a sophomore. For his first year, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, he stuck close to home in Illinois but longed for more. “I felt like I wasn’t becoming the best version of myself there. I had some academic interests my small school didn’t have the breadth or depth of resources to investigate.”

He had been drawn to linguistics and how language learning disabilities like dyslexia can impact health outcomes. A campus visit and a conversation with renowned linguistics professor Edna Andrews cemented his decision to transfer.

While studying linguistics at Duke, his academic interests evolved, and he started to become interested in prison activism. “I was meeting people who had been incarcerated that had learning disabilities. And the reason I was interested in neurolinguistics in the first place is because my brother has a learning disability. We were able to homeschool him to help personalize his education. Many of the incarcerated people I met who faced similar challenges did not have the same safety net or support system, and this led to them making decisions that often led to contact with the criminal justice system.”

A Custom Curriculum

“When I decided I had this interest in incarceration studies and health that I wanted to pursue, Program II was a good fit for that,” he says, “and now there’s a Carceral Certificate.”

Lieber took classes at Trinity, the Divinity School, Sanford and nearby North Carolina Central University (NCCU), which has a criminal justice department. “My subject is inherently interdisciplinary — I need to understand statistics, sociology, American history.”

At NCCU, Lieber took a course with Roshanna Parker, director of the Durham County Justice Services Department, on how the criminal justice system works in the U.S. and in Durham.

“I think the coolest part was, I was taking the class, then I would then go to stakeholder meetings [at the Durham County Jail], and she would be there and introduce me,” says Lieber. “So I got to know a lot of the major players and have conversations with them.”

Experiential, Hands-on Learning

Lieber also joined Duke’s interdisciplinary Data+ and Bass Connections programs. “I didn't know anything about data science, had zero coding experience, so Data+ was a really helpful accelerator for me to get me up to speed,” he says. “[Team leaders] Nicole Schramm-Sapyta and Maria Tackett, and another student named Foxx Hart, essentially taught me everything I know about coding.”

His Data+ team, Mental Health and the Justice System in Durham County, created a dataset of all bookings from the Durham County Detention Facility and Duke Health service encounters to inform criminal justice system stakeholders of the mental health needs, service uptake and insurance status of inmates.

Image

Now he’s taking a course on regression analysis with Tackett. “It’s kind of like a full circle; she really has been with me the whole way. I also think it’s important that Foxx played a large role through peer-to-peer learning.”

Lieber’s research continued through the related Bass Connections project and involved analyzing the dataset to explore associations between healthcare utilization and inmates with diagnosed severe mental illness and substance use disorder. The goal is to make recommendations to the Durham County Detention Facility as to the cost-effectiveness and overall success of their interventions and identify ways Duke Health can continue to be a supportive partner in their efforts. 

“I think my project is a really good execution of the Bass Connections vision of having students get facetime with professors and medical students, Ph.D. students, and grad students and peers. All these people have contributed so much to my understanding of data science and what it means to conduct community-oriented research.”

This experience prepared him to work on his interdisciplinary thesis characterizing the experiences of people with incarcerated loved ones, looking at the caregiver and support role through interviews.

“Dr. Schramm-Sapyta is also my Program II advisor and my thesis advisor,” Lieber says.  “She and the whole lab have been helping me. Having their advice and mentorship, I couldn’t have done it without them.”

Community Engagement

Lieber works with StepUp Durham, a reentry organization providing education, employment readiness training and more for people released from prison. “They often need people to take care of their children and Step Up Durham has childcare services, but an interesting gap that we could fill is those kids need help with their homework,” he says. “So I helped organize Duke student tutoring sessions there.”

Another community partner is Restorative Justice Durham. Lieber worked on a case to identify what gun violence survivors think needs to be done about gun violence policy in Durham.

“Durham is a really cool place to be involved in any kind of volunteer work,” says Lieber. “There are hundreds of nonprofits in Durham and many do work related to reentry or the justice involvement. I just continue to do these things and continue to find them meaningful.”

He’s also a volunteer intern at the federal prison 12 miles away in Butner County. “I spend some time with staff, and especially the medical staff there, to understand how the prison works and what the obligations are of a physician working in a prison.”

What’s Next

The next time I see Lieber is at the at the Bass Connections Showcase, an annual event to share findings. He’s standing next to his team’s poster on the associations between healthcare utilization and justice-related outcomes.

Image

The poster presents research, including on the Durham Justice Services Department’s programs aimed at supporting individuals with substance use disorder and serious mental illness. The team found these programs to be effective and recommends increasing the frequency of check-ins and implementing information boards to raise awareness of the programs. Additionally, they suggest expanding referrals to holistic services such as those offered through the Justice Services Center and transitional housing options.

After graduation, Lieber will take a gap year while applying to medical school, hoping to continue working in justice-related health fields. He sees himself possibly working within a correctional institution as an educator. “It’s a tough time to job hunt,” he says, “but prisons, for better or worse, aren’t going away. That work will always be needed.”

Learn more about Will Lieber and what shaped his trajectory at Duke: How a Course on Restorative Justice Shaped Two Students’ Paths at Duke.

View his Bass Connections team’s poster: Mental Health and the Justice System in Durham County: Striving to Understand Associations Between Healthcare Utilization and Justice-related Outcomes in Durham County. 

---

Main image: Summer Steenberg