{"id":1684,"date":"2026-04-08T15:04:29","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T15:04:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/graduate-studies\/?p=1684"},"modified":"2026-04-08T15:04:29","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T15:04:29","slug":"sierra-burns-m29-made-headlines-at-februarys-state-of-the-union-for-her-advocacy-of-the-foster-care-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/graduate-studies\/sierra-burns-m29-made-headlines-at-februarys-state-of-the-union-for-her-advocacy-of-the-foster-care-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Sierra Burns M\u201929 made headlines at February\u2019s State of the Union for her advocacy of the foster care system"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Furman University <a href=\"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/sierra-burns-m29-made-headlines-at-februarys-state-of-the-union-for-her-advocacy-of-the-foster-care-system\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">recently highlighted<\/a> Sierra Burns M\u201929, a grad student pursuing her master\u2019s degree in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/graduate-studies\/advocacy-and-social-policy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">advocacy and social policy<\/a>. On Feb. 24, Sierra was seated in the gallery in Washington, D.C., next to First Lady Melania Trump and members of the Trump family, a special guest invited because of her advocacy for youth in foster care. Sierra&#8217;s advocacy work is what ultimately caught the attention of federal officials searching for a voice to highlight during the State of the Union.<\/p>\n<p>Sierra is currently pushing for policies that expand resources for foster youth, including extended support funding and free college tuition for students leaving the foster care system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Furman University recently highlighted Sierra Burns M\u201929, a grad student pursuing her master\u2019s degree in advocacy and social policy. On Feb. 24, Sierra was seated in the gallery in Washington, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1685,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[179,42,133],"class_list":["post-1684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advocacy-social-policy","tag-advocacyandsocialpolicy","tag-furman-university","tag-graduate-studies"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/graduate-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/graduate-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/graduate-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/graduate-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/graduate-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1684"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/graduate-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1687,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/graduate-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1684\/revisions\/1687"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/graduate-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/graduate-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/graduate-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/graduate-studies\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}