joining us here is deborah hicks, her book "the road out: a teacher's odyssey in poor america." what do you do here at duke, first of all? >> i have a couple of things i do, part of a research unit. that is a unit composed of people doing research in the social sciences. then i am also a social entrepreneur. there i work with appalachian girls in middle school and help them get educational opportunity and access. i have a couple of different hats. >> social entrepreneur, is that a knew term? >> i think it was coined by people like nicholas kristof, but it is widely used now for people like me who direct nonprofits and do different things in the nonprofit sector. >> how did you get involved with appalachian girls in middle school? >> that is a long story i write about in "the road out". i grew up as a working-class girl. the first in my family to go to college which was a big step for me and ended up, through a scholarship, going to college and doing super wrong in college and ended up going on and getting a graduate degree from harvard in education. that long journey i experienc

. >> deborah hicks, where do you think you were successful, and where would you do things different? >> i think i think we were very successful, and intimacy, a super successful class, seven girls who were attaching themselves to school, loving literature, books. i think the biggest challenge i faced was just about the time that my class finished i had to leave to come back to my home state and found my nonprofit. the biggest difficulty was not being able to finish the class when the girls were entering adolescence. that is why when i found my new initiative, i made sure we were serving girls in the middle school years. most vulnerable and trying to define who they are and what they want to be in life that is something i learned from the class in cincinnati that i brought back. >> people are interested in your nonprofit, the website? >> carolina page .org. partnership appalachian girls education. you can find stuff on the website. you can go to a story's page on the website and watch digital stories, meet the girls. we we would love people to go check out the website and meet these a

joining us here is deborah hicks, her book "the road out: a teacher's odyssey in poor america." what do you do here at duke, first of all? >> i have a couple of things i do, part of a research unit. that is a unit composed of people doing research in the social sciences. then i am also a social entrepreneur. there i work with appalachian girls in middle school and help them get educational opportunity and access. i have a couple of different hats.