The Bahamas-to-Beloit Connection
Top high school graduates from The Bahamas have been enriching the Beloit College community since they started enrolling consistently in the 1980s. The connection between the college and this small island nation is far from coincidental.
Beloit is known for its vibrant international student population, but the college’s record of enrolling high-achieving students from the Commonwealth of The Bahamas is particularly noteworthy. Since the 1980s, Beloit’s graduating classes have included at least one Bahamian student, and typically several, from this island nation in the West Indies 1,400 miles from campus.
Given their country’s small population and the distance from Wisconsin, the Bahamian student presence year after year is nothing short of remarkable. Most Beloit students from The Bahamas are part of a cohort of hundreds of Moore Scholars, mainly international students provided access to a Beloit education through one group of generous Beloit advocates: the Moore family.
The late Harry C. Moore, the family’s patriarch, was a civic leader, longtime president of the Beloit Corporation, and the college’s former board chair. He was known as an outstanding salesman who started selling brushes door-to-door as a college student and later worked his way up the ranks of the Beloit Corporation. From 1958 to 1978, he was the company’s president, leading it to become the largest papermaking machine company in the world. He was instrumental in internationalizing the company from its City of Beloit base. He was also an outsized force for good in the city and at the college and a donor who cared deeply about the young people he helped to support.
Credit: Beloit College Archives
The Bahamian-Beloit connection began when Moore retired and moved to Nassau in 1978. Collaborating with friends in his affluent Lyford Cay neighborhood, he supported a variety of initiatives, including making college affordable to top Bahamian students. Moore and his friends identified potential scholarship recipients and invited them to apply to the Lyford Cay Foundation, which Moore co-chaired and which by the time he died in 2003 had awarded 1,200 scholarships to Bahamian students. Dozens of these students chose to come to Beloit. In 1996, he received the Commonwealth of the Bahamas Queen’s Honor, a title second only to knighthood. Moore remained dedicated to the college and the communities where he lived until his death at age 89.
In 1986, the family formalized a scholarship commitment specifically at Beloit when they initiated the Moore Family Scholarship Fund for international students and to help high-need American students defray the costs of study abroad. Each year, because of the family’s love for The Bahamas and its people, two of the six initial scholarships were reserved for qualified Bahamian students. The program was the college’s largest endowed scholarship fund of its kind when it was established, and its earnings continue to support promising Bahamians and international students from other countries.
Credit: Courtesy of Frank Davis’91 More than 300 Beloiter Moore Scholars have gone on to excel in their professions and contribute to their communities, paying forward the Moore family spirit of civic duty and generosity. Harry Moore’s legacy continues to this day with Moore Scholars still adding their talents to the Beloit student and alumni community.
Alan McIvor, Beloit’s vice president for enrollment from 1981 to 2000, helped Moore establish the Beloit scholarships, traveling to The Bahamas twice a year to recruit Beloit’s student-scholars. “All the students from The Bahamas during my tenure were wonderful young men and women,” McIvor says. “They were talented and hardworking and all of them were successful, meaning they went on to do good work in their careers and communities over the years.”
Indeed, the lasting impact of the Beloit-Bahamas connection is the quality of the alumni and the promise of current and future student-scholars. To date, approximately 50 alumni from The Bahamas are proud Beloiters and Moore Scholars. We celebrate this legacy in the stories of four from among them.
Dr. Duranda Ash’87
Ophthalmologist, Owner of Ash Eye Clinics
Credit: Lyndah Wells Photograph Dr. Duranda Ash remembers visiting a Nassau hospital as a toddler and being in awe of the uniformed, purposeful doctors. She kept that memory as she grew up, applying herself in school and aspiring to become a doctor herself. The question was, how would the daughter of a single mother with few resources achieve her dream?
Ash was adopted at three weeks. She describes her late mother as “one of the most Christ-like women I know.” After giving up her home to a nephew in need with five kids, Ash’s mother moved with her daughter into her Nassau shop, where they slept on the floor. They lived in relative poverty, but with great love and deep faith.
As Ash neared graduation from high school, a nun at her school asked her where she was going to college. Although Ash had the grades and the desire, she didn’t have an answer. This prompted the nun to talk with Moore, who had recently relocated to Nassau.
In 1983, Ash became the first Bahamian Moore Scholar to enroll at Beloit College. She thrived at Beloit. She appreciated the small classes and studying in small groups led by her advisor, Professor of Biology John Lutz. She welcomed the change of seasons and vividly remembers the warmth of the people she met. And while the Moore Scholarship provided her with financial support, it also offered something that money could not buy: Moore became like a father to her.
For her 18th birthday, when she was on campus far from home, Moore had a birthday cake made for her. “I can still remember it like it was yesterday, and it had Beloit College written on it,” she recalls. Moore also started a tradition by inviting Ash to join him for lunch at the Beloit Country Club, where the two bonded over many things, including a favorite dessert. “He would always have pecan pie à la mode,” she says. “To this day, if pecan pie comes up, I have a piece à la mode and I think about Mr. Moore.”
The two kept in contact in Beloit and in The Bahamas for many years. When she got married in Nassau in 2001, Ash invited Moore and his wife to serve as witnesses. When Moore passed away in 2003, Ash spoke at his memorial service. Today, her life’s work as an ophthalmologist dedicated to providing high-quality eye care regardless of patients’ ability to pay embodies Moore’s care and generosity.
Ash graduated magna cum laude with a biochemistry major, went on to Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and completed residencies at Stanford University and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. In 1997, she returned to The Bahamas to open the Ash Eye Institute, the first of what would become three eye clinics on three islands in the cities of Nassau, Freeport, and Marsh Harbor.
These for-profit enterprises allow her to devote resources to providing eye care to those who cannot afford it. “I am a firm believer that people who don’t have the means to pay for excellent eye care should get the same care as those who can pay,” she says.
Ash was also responsible for creating the government eye clinic on the island of Grand Bahama, a pioneering effort in providing access to eye care. She has provided free vision screenings on The Bahamas’ smaller islands, and after Hurricane Dorian in 2019, she mobilized her network in the Christian Ophthalmology Society to screen more than 800 residents and replace hundreds of pairs of glasses people had lost in the storm. She’s helped educate Bahamians on eye health through public service TV and radio programs.
Ash says that, in her own way, she is carrying on Moore’s work of giving people a chance who otherwise would not have it. “In eye care, my field, that is my desire: to level the playing field as much as possible.”
Frank Davis’91
Minister-Counsellor (Retired), The Bahamas Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Thought Leader, ISR Leadership
Credit: Maise Gibb For three decades, Frank Davis’91 represented his home country of The Bahamas as a foreign service officer, traveling the world and engaging in diplomacy. He’s lived in New York, Zurich, London, and Nassau — the city where he grew up. He represented The Bahamas at the United Nations General Assembly in New York and led his country’s delegation to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland.
After an early retirement, he joined Individual Social Responsibility (ISR) Leadership, a global nonprofit consulting firm working on environmental sustainability, equity and inclusion, community engagement and development, and mental health awareness. These are among the issues that mattered most to Davis as a diplomat.
Now living in London, Davis was 16 when he came to Beloit from The Bahamas as a Moore Scholar. He remembers people’s concerns about his age, but he didn’t think it was such a big deal. When he arrived on campus, however, he was surprised by the maturity of fellow students, but soon made friendships that eased his transition, including with his dear friend, the late Jennifer Voelker’91. “Jennifer was in my class and on my floor. She was one of the people who really made me feel welcome at Beloit,” Davis says.
As a scholarship student at a private high school in The Bahamas, Davis had gravitated toward international politics. But after losing both his parents, he lacked the resources to join his classmates on their paths to boarding school, then university.
He found Beloit through the headmaster of his school, a friend of Moore, who arranged for them to meet. “He told me all about Beloit College,” Davis recalls of Moore. “He was probably one of the biggest salesmen for Beloit, especially in The Bahamas.”
Davis found the college to be exactly what he was looking for — a small school with a strong international program and a large contingent of international students. He applied for a scholarship through the Lyford Cay Foundation in The Bahamas and got it. The Moore Family Scholarship matched those funds, putting Beloit within reach.
At Beloit, Davis planned to major in economics, but realized that international relations, and a future career in diplomacy, combined all his interests. “I enjoyed the personal aspect of international relations, trying to figure out what made people tick, and how and why they took the positions they did and the whole idea of negotiation,” he says. He knew he’d be returning home after graduating from Beloit, and that foreign service would allow him to stay involved in international relations and politics from The Bahamas.
Davis’s years at Beloit were rich and varied. He made lifelong friends and tried new things, such as singing in the choir and learning to play the cello. He was active in theatre, mainly backstage, and managed the box office his senior year. After graduating, he landed an internship at a professional opera house in Connecticut before returning to The Bahamas, where he joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A few years later, he completed Oxford University’s interdisciplinary foreign service program in England.
Davis’s strongest Beloit memories center on the friends he made and the sense of community he felt, as a student in his own right and as part of something larger as a Moore Scholar.
“I got a great education, and it was a great experience to see a part of the United States that I never would have seen otherwise,” he says. “I was exposed to a lot of different ideas that I never would have been if I’d stayed in The Bahamas.”
Dr. Sudha Pavuluri Quamme’94
Medical Scientist and Researcher
Credit: Martin Vire Many things conspired to bring Dr. Sudha Pavuluri Quamme’94 from The Bahamas to Beloit.
First, there was tennis. In high school, she played on the junior national team for her home country, which prompted Professor Bob Hodge, then Beloit’s head tennis coach, to come calling. As a top student academically, and a Bahamian citizen, Quamme was also on the radar of the Moore Family Scholarships at Beloit, though she didn’t realize it at the time.
She also could not have known that she would meet her future husband, Erik Quamme’96, at Beloit.
Today, the couple lives in Columbus, Wisconsin, with their two daughters. Sudha, an M.D. by training, works at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health in the school’s Department of Surgery, researching ways to improve the performance of surgeons in the operating room.
A Beloit College Trustee for more than a dozen years, and a member of the Alumni Board before that, she considers her service as one way of giving back to the college, which had an outsized impact on her. “There is not a day that goes by in my life where Beloit isn’t present in my mind or there’s something I’m referencing back to what I did as part of my Beloit College experience,” she says.
When she was five, she moved with her family from India to Freeport on the island of Grand Bahama. Growing up there was a privilege, she says, describing it as idyllic, safe, and culturally diverse. She may have been born in India, but The Bahamas is home. Even today, when she steps inside the college’s World Affairs Center or attends Commencement, Quamme looks for the Bahamian flag.
If not for the Bahamian connection and the Moore family’s support, Beloit might not have been an option. “Even though I was fortunate to have a dad who is a physician, he was a government employee in a small country, and he was the sole breadwinner for our family at the time, so Beloit College was still a stretch for my family.” She first learned about the Moore Scholarship when her financial aid package arrived.
On a small island, Quamme’s father was a well-known and trusted anesthesiologist. People called him at home or stopped him in the grocery store to ask for health care advice. Through her father, Quamme recognized the positive impact health care professionals can have on people’s lives, but she did not come to Beloit with a pre-conceived notion of going into medicine. True, she was a self-described “science geek” from the beginning, but when she wasn’t in Chamberlin Hall, she was in the Sports Center.
Coach Bill Knapton hired her as student manager for men’s basketball, a work-study job she held for four years. She also managed the baseball team for Coach Dave DeGeorge’89, served as an orientation leader, and was a highly productive student-scientist.
She followed up her Beloit degree in biochemistry with a master’s degree at Newcastle University in England in biochemistry and genetics, followed by the University of Nottingham Medical School, then the top-rated medical school in England. She believes her diverse Beloit experiences helped her get accepted. After residency, she was thinking about returning to The Bahamas when a research opportunity opened up in Chicago, returning her to the proximity of many Beloit friends, including Erik Quamme.
Looking back on her Beloit years, Sudha Quamme recalls the fun of dressing up to join Moore and his wife at the Beloit Country Club, where they would host the Moore Scholars for lunch.
“They were so generous with their time and so interested in hearing about what we’d been doing,” she remembers. The Moores would ask students about their goals, if they needed anything, whether they were homesick. “For them, it was not just about giving us financial assistance. It was also caring about our experience and how we were doing.”
Kayus Fernander’01
Senior Vice President, Citibank UK
Credit: Maise Gibb Even as a child growing up in Nassau, Kayus Fernander’01 was curious about the world. He devoured books, including the encyclopedia, to learn about places and communities beyond his small island nation.
That voracious curiosity stayed with him, through high school, at Beloit, in graduate school, and now in a career in global commerce. He’s spent more than a dozen years with Citibank in London, the U.S.-based bank’s hub for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. A senior vice president, Fernander leads treasury sales for Citi’s commercial clients with multinational businesses in the consumer and health care sectors.
“These are exciting companies,” he says. “They are cutting edge and fast-growing and they’re doing interesting things. That’s one of the things that’s kept me going at Citi. It’s how global the organization is and how interesting our clients are.”
Although he didn’t set out to, Fernander has played a visible role in developing Citi’s corporate culture. In the bank’s London office, he co-chairs the company’s Pride Network, an LGBTQIA+ employee resource group. “We firmly believe that when people can be themselves and experience and express all of the elements of who they are, then they are that much more engaged at work, and they want to stay with the organization even longer,” he says.
After finishing his MBA at Manchester (U.K.) Business School, Fernander took an internship with Citi, then accepted a job with the bank. For the first time, he decided to be forthright about who he was in his professional career.
“I was interested in what it would be like to develop my professional identity as an out, gay man, which was something I hadn’t been able to do, even though I’d worked in the United States and in The Bahamas,” he says. “I never felt like I had the space or even the vocabulary to be able to do that before.” Now that he’s found community, resources, and support, he wants to help others on that journey.
One of eight kids, Fernander grew up in a warm, tight-knit family. He earned a partial scholarship to the University of Richmond through the Lyford Cay Foundation. After his mother became ill during his first year, Fernander had to withdraw and return to The Bahamas. That’s when the foundation connected him with Beloit and the Moore Scholars program.
In three years at Beloit, Fernander made friends with students from Bhutan, China, Pakistan, Suriname, and many other countries. He joined TKE, Beloit’s fraternity that welcomes many international students. In Beloit’s classrooms, he learned how to debate and understand tough issues.
“A lot of the things we’re discussing now — social issues around race, around sexuality, around geopolitical conflicts — were things I was discussing at Beloit, and it just fired my imagination in a way that has never left me,” he says.
Fernander graduated with a double major in economics and international relations, and received the Martha Peterson Prize. That attracted the attention of then-Trustee Andy Davis’79, who was running the Rock Island Company, a brokerage firm on the floor of the Chicago Stock Exchange. Davis attended Beloit’s Commencement, congratulated Fernander, and invited him to apply for a job.
Fernander had always dreamed of being a stockbroker, and while he learned a great deal, he discovered that he didn’t really enjoy the work. Eventually, he returned to The Bahamas, landing a post in the government’s investments ministry before joining a resort development company. He decided to pursue an MBA, and after graduating, he joined Citibank, where he’s been ever since.
Fernander fondly remembers meeting Moore in Beloit during Moore Scholar events. “You know how people describe certain politicians — that when they talk to you, you feel like you’re the most important person in the room? That’s what Harry Moore was like,” he says.
He also recalls the high quality of fellow Bahamian Moore Scholars who collectively raised the academic bar, and took seriously the Moore family’s vote of confidence in them. Fernander did not take the opportunity for granted. “I wanted to prove that they had made the right choice in selecting me,” he says.
Fernander says he’s proud of the connection between The Bahamas and Beloit and is glad to see it continue. “I think it’s a testament to the kind of partnerships and relationships that can be developed between different communities that are very unlikely but also make sense because ultimately the world is connected.”
In Remembrance: Ebony Allaya Miller’20
Research Scientist and Physician’s Assistant
Credit: Beloit College Archives Ebony Miller’20 dreamed of becoming a physician and making a difference in the lives of women in her home country of The Bahamas. She was a Moore Scholar and an exemplary student — brilliant, creative, and hardworking. She was a campus leader, a teaching assistant, a founder of Afro-Caribbean Society, and a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. She was also a gifted artist, dancer, and painter.
After graduating summa cum laude, she moved to Minneapolis, where she worked as a pancreatic cancer research scientist in the Stromnes Lab in the Department of Microbiology & Immunology and Center for Immunology at the University of Minnesota. She was accepted into Howard Medical School and planned to enroll in 2023.
In November 2022, while driving home from her second job as a physician’s assistant at M Health Fairview in Minneapolis, her life was cut short when another car collided with hers. She was 24. Ebony touched many lives, and she is remembered for her love and compassion, and all that she accomplished.
For Harry Moore, the Moore Scholarships were personal.
Credit: Courtesy of Dan Spaulding’86
During his lifetime, Harry C. Moore made sure he got to know the students who were Moore Scholars — from The Bahamas and from many other countries. He hosted regular social events in Beloit, created a special pin for scholars to wear, and made himself available as a stand-in parent when students needed advice and support. After many Moore Scholars graduated, they would continue to hear from Moore, who had a keen interest in how they were doing.
A member of Beloit’s Board of Trustees for five decades, Moore chaired the board during the 1970s, a challenging financial period for the college. Many count him among a handful of people whose dedication, fundraising skills, and personal generosity made possible the college’s turnaround that began in the 1980s.
Credit: Courtesy of Dan Spaulding’86 Dan Spaulding’86, a Moore Scholar originally from France, says Moore was “exporting papermaking machines and a Beloit College liberal arts education at the same time.” Spaulding explains that as Moore built business relationships with clients across the globe, he found ways to get their children to enroll at Beloit.
This laid the foundation for the Moore Family Scholarship Fund, established in the 1980s to foster transnational understanding. Because the Moore family vacationed and eventually resided in Nassau, they reserved scholarships each year for Bahamian students.
In his lifetime, Moore was recognized for his major contributions to civic organizations. In Beloit, that included helping to establish Beloit’s YMCA and raising funds for the city’s hospital. Campus and city spaces still bear his name, including Moore Lounge in Pearsons Hall, the Moore Townhouse student residences, and the Harry Moore Pavilion, a riverfront, community gathering place known as Harry’s Place. Today, Sylvia López (Spanish) holds the Harry C. Moore Professorship of Modern Languages and Literatures at Beloit, as did the late Professor Jack Street (French) before her.
Spaulding’s mother was a close friend of Moore’s daughter, the late Jane Petit-Moore, who continued her father’s scholarship legacy at Beloit. When he was a student, Spaulding remembers Harry Moore as a reassuring presence when he was far from his home and family. Back then, Moore kept an office in Morse Library, and Spaulding knew that he could stop by anytime and have the chairman of the board’s undivided attention.
“Whatever he had going on, he’d stop, and we’d talk about anything and everything from ambitions to internships I was applying for to my opinion of my advisor,” he says. “He was interested in everything I had to say, all the feedback I had.”
This attention wasn’t reserved for Spaulding because of his family connections. “This was the case for all of the scholars,” he says, “and that was something that you never forget. He was completely connected to us.”
