Herjok Panther Deng Agot '26 is from Bor, South Sudan. “[I]t’s a super rural, small community. You know everybody. Everybody knows you,” he says.
Due to the conflict in his country, in 2013, his family, including his mother and siblings, left for Uganda, where they lived in a refugee camp, where Agot attended school and began volunteering. During his time there, he remembers, “I looked at the community and the situation we all were in, and thought 'how can i help/serve?,’ because I was becoming aware of what it means to be a leader,” he says. This led him to start volunteering as an interpreter at the local hospital, helping patients communicate with doctors, and looking for ways education could ripple outward.
A Notre Dame connection helped him imagine what that could look like. While at secondary school, he met Ngor “Majak” Anyieth ’18, a Notre Dame alumnus who had returned to South Sudan to open a high school. “We need schools that educate leaders and peacemakers, and connect South Sudan to the rest of the world,” says Agot. With the backing of his organization Education Bridge, Anyieth and his team are on track to build a network of 10 secondary schools across South Sudan to educate transformational leaders in their communities.
Agot finished his last year of high school at Greenbelt Academy, one of Anyieth’s schools. He was already looking at studying at Notre Dame, and learned that the best way for him to get there was through the African Leadership Academy (ALA) in South Africa. This prep was his first immersion in formal essay writing and sustained research.
“I’d never written an essay in my life,” Agot says, smiling. “I had to write seven essays. I probably [worked on] this for seven months.” The ALA interview took place over a shaky phone line. “I could barely hear them [and] really could not understand the English well,” he says. But he made the cut. “I told them, ‘I want to go to Notre Dame. Tell me the one, two, three, four things I need to do,’” says Agot, enumerating on his fingers.
Notre Dame became the only school he applied to. “December 17th, at probably 4:00 a.m., I opened my [email from Notre Dame] and they’re like, ‘Welcome home!’ I was screaming,” he recalls joyfully.
When Agot first visited campus for Admitted Student Days (now The Rally), he laughed through the shock of Midwestern spring—“It was freezing”—but started picturing his life here. South Bend felt expansive compared to home.
A professor connected to his South Sudan high school, Professor Steve Reifenberg, and his wife, Christine Cervenak, helped him transition, including helping Agot move into his residence hall. After three years in Duncan Hall, in a triple, then a double, then a single, he moved off campus as a senior. “I like the idea of making my own food. It’s fun,” he laughs.
Academically, Agot chose neuroscience and behavior (pre-med) to understand how the brain develops and how trauma affects people’s lives across time. “I love learning about how the brain works,” he says.
The questions he examines in his studies are personal. Growing up, he saw the effects of conflict and stress, “especially in children and how that affects them as they grow up.” In the Childhood and Adolescence Resilience (CARE) Lab, led by Dr. Elizabeth Shewark, he contributes to research on neighborhood infrastructure, youth resilience, and parenting.
“We’re investigating the effects of neighborhood infrastructure…and how it influences resilience among youth and parenting styles,” he explains. The work blends mapping parks, recreation centers, and streetscapes and includes family visits and interviews in South Bend.
Class, service, and community-building shape the rest of Agot’s days. During basketball games, he walks the arenas with the First Aid League. He competes in interhall basketball and intersection football, and he plays lots of basketball on the side, which he’s always loved and found to be a helpful outlet.
Agot has also worked for the Development Office at Notre Dame, keeping alumni and families connected to the University and he works in admissions as a Rural and Small Town intern. This semester he joined a Wellness Center pilot program as a peer listener.
Summers have become a way to link his learning to action in his home community. Agot has returned to South Sudan to teach essay writing for college applications via Education Bridge, teaching a six- to seven-week course with help from the Notre Dame Writing Center and a faculty mini-curriculum.
In Uganda, Agot worked with an institute founded by a Notre Dame theology professor on integral ecology, working on tree planting, habitat preservation, and sustainable farming while conducting youth-unemployment research.
With support from the Hesburgh-Yusko Scholars Program, he even launched a basketball camp in his refugee community. “About 71 kids showed up…from different countries, different tribes,” he recalls. Playing basketball gave the kids an opportunity to meet, bond with each other, and relieve stress in an otherwise pretty chaotic environment.
Study abroad added another layer of experience for Agot. In London, he got the chance to attend a Premier League match while interning at Peace Direct, a charity organization supporting local peacebuilders in conflict zones around the globe. His research at Peace Direct focused on trauma-informed program design, and Agot says the experience fed directly into his vision for using sport as a tool for peacebuilding in his country of South Sudan.
Long-term, he hopes to build a network of sports community centers or sports complexes across the 10 states of South Sudan, hosting tournaments that bring young people together as a step towards peacebuilding. In the immediate future, he’s weighing the possibilities of med school, other graduate study, and health sector roles, all aligned with mental-health awareness and care.
As Agot looks to his future, a sense of gratitude drives his purpose. “Throughout my whole education, I’ve had a lot of help, sometimes from people I have never met,” he says. He appreciates his past teachers, friends, and others who have supported his journey.
Recalling his basketball program with refugee youth, he says, “A lot of the kids told me they now had some sense of purpose, something to work towards.” Agot knows that whichever path calls him after graduation next May, he will work to spread inspiration and instill hope both back home and abroad.
Watch the video above to learn more about Agot's Notre Dame journey.
