Staff Sergeant Clark Copelin

One enlistment in the Army was not enough to do what Staff Sergeant Clark Copelin set out to accomplish when he joined. After years of training, Clark spent the back three of his time in the military tracking Al-Qaeda on deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq.

After working hard in high school and then attending Dartmouth, serving as an enlisted soldier and an Arabic linguist was a choice of conscience, taken out of a sense of duty and a refusal to sit on the sidelines while others went to fight in his stead. When forced to choose between an officer’s commission and an enlistment, Clark chose to pass up becoming an officer in order to fulfill the much needed requirement the nation had for military linguists.

Clark’s decision to study law at Emory University is the next step in actively choosing to live a life based upon service to others. It is Clark’s belief that adherence to principle through conscious action is the highest goal a person can strive for throughout a lifetime, and by returning to Maine after graduation, he plans to continue such a path by working with his state at the local level to improve Maine’s economy and educational system for future generations of Americans.