Class of 2020 Millennium Fellows graduate

Fourteen Furman University students have graduated in the 2020 class of the Millennium Fellowship, a semester-long program of the United Nations Academic Impact and the Millennium Campus Network.

The program convenes, challenges and celebrates student leadership in support of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. It most recently drew more than 15,000 applicants from over 1,450 campuses across 135 nations.

Ultimately, only 80 campuses (26 in the United States) across 20 nations were selected to host the 1,400+ Millennium Fellows for 2020.

Selected in August 2020, the graduating Furman Millennium Fellows are:

• Moriah Barr ’21 (sustainability science), East Kingston, New Hampshire
• Meghan Bullard ’21 (biology and German studies), Buford, Georgia
• Elise Dudley ’21 (sustainability science), Charlotte, North Carolina
• Emilia Hyland ’21 (sustainability science), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
• Sophie Klass ’21 (politics & international affairs and German studies), Marietta, Georgia
• Riley Luckmann ’22 (computer science and health sciences), Decatur, Georgia
• Charlotte Moore ’22 (urban studies, mathematics-economics, and German), Cincinnati, Ohio
• Taylor Moore ’22 (German studies and sociology), Knoxville, Tennessee
• Elizabeth Ortiz ’21 (urban studies and politics & international affairs), Signal Mountain, Tennessee
• Zoe Parker ’21 (sustainability science and sociology), Fort Wayne, Indiana
• Rachel Perkins ’21 (health sciences major, and minors in Latin American studies and medicine, health and culture), Charlotte, North Carolina
• Imaya Virani ’22 (public health), Houston, Texas
• Jordan Winiski ’21 (studio art and sustainability science), Greenville, South Carolina
• Shuhan (Jenny) Yue ’22 (psychology), Zuzhou, China

Hannah Dailey, Shi Institute for Sustainable Communities.

During fall semester last year, Millennium Fellows took action to help advance the United Nations Academic Impact Principles and the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, such as zero hunger, quality education, and good health and wellbeing. Collectively, fellows’ projects are estimated to have positively impacted nearly 980,000 people worldwide.

“It has been exciting for Furman to be part of the Millennium Fellowship since its inception and to see the cumulative positive change that has come out of it,” said Hannah Dailey, program coordinator for Furman’s Shi Institute for Sustainable Communities. ” The fellowship has received praise from our students for three years, and we look forward to having a new group of fellows next academic year.”

Elise Dudley ’21.

Elise Dudley, a senior sustainability science major, led the project, “Backyard Gardening for Food System Resilience,” incorporating UNAI Principle 2 – Capacity Building, and UNSDG 2 – Zero Hunger.

As a part of an ongoing research project, Dudley distributed a survey to gardeners and completed a land inventory spatial analysis, which identified potentially arable land for at-home food production on residential parcels in Greenville County, South Carolina.

The survey assessed and analyzed how gardening shapes local food economies and explored how gardening activities relate to personal values and behaviors. Her research was inspired by observing and exploring the way Americans responded to widespread fragility and insecurity in our agro-industrial food system as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dudley is now preparing to present her findings at academic conferences this spring, and with the gardeners who participated in the survey. She plans to translate her research into actionable recommendations for the City of Greenville to highlight the capacity for transformation and the benefits of prioritizing healthy communities, food sovereignty and ecosystem diversity.

“I am thrilled to be a Millennium Fellow and to be a part of an international network of like-minded peers collaborating toward the vision of a just, healthy and livable world for all,” Dudley wrote about the experience.

Learn more about the fellows’ projects here. For more information about the Millennium Fellowship, contact Hannah Dailey at hannah.dailey@furman.edu, and 864-294-3680.