{"id":7304,"date":"2018-03-12T13:52:07","date_gmt":"2018-03-12T17:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/2018\/03\/12\/furman-students-serve-as-delegates-to-the-u-n\/"},"modified":"2022-11-06T18:56:51","modified_gmt":"2022-11-06T23:56:51","slug":"furman-students-serve-as-delegates-to-the-u-n","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/furman-students-serve-as-delegates-to-the-u-n\/","title":{"rendered":"Furman students serve as delegates to the U.N."},"content":{"rendered":"

An intensive immersion into humanity\u2019s most pressing and daunting problems has the potential to be demoralizing. For Furman senior McKenna Luzynski, however, last month\u2019s UNA-USA Global Engagement Summit<\/a> at the United Nations headquarters in New York City was validating.<\/p>\n

Luzynski was one of a group of four Furman students who attended the one-day conference on Feb. 23. She participated in sessions on climate change, issues facing the U.N., human rights and the global refugee crisis, and by the time the long day was over the public health and Spanish double major was more sure than ever she wants to be one of those experts she saw working to make a better world.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis just reaffirms that\u2019s the field that I want to be in,\u201d Luzynski, who will begin pursuing a master\u2019s degree in public health next year at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, says. \u201cIt is a very specialized school, but I will be taking some really interesting classes on conflict and health and environment and sustainable development and figuring out how we can conserve our natural resources while also furthering the development of our world. That\u2019s really what the sustainable goals are all about. Afterward, I am looking to get my Ph.D.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joining Luzynski in New York were Christy Litz \u201920, Johnpaul Sleiman \u201921 and Grace Marmaras \u201920. Litz is a biology major with a minor in medicine, health and culture, and like Luzysnski, she left the conference inspired.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am pre-med, so if I stay on this track it has solidified my desire to do something with an agency that reaches out to war-torn areas and under-privileged areas,\u201d she says. \u201cIt frustrates me that people are so complacent. This experience spoke to me on getting people to do something, going from words and rhetoric to action.\u201d<\/p>\n

The whirlwind trip, which saw the students fly out Thursday and return Saturday, was funded by the Furman Politics and International Affairs Department<\/a> and the Student Government Association. Tickets were available because of the university\u2019s No Lost Generation<\/a> chapter, which Natalie Tikhonovsky \u201920, who was recently named a University Innovation Fellow<\/a> by Stanford University\u2019s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, founded just this year.<\/p>\n

Launched in 2013, No Lost Generation is a commitment to support children and youth affected by the Syria and Iraq crises. Luzynski, Litz, Sleiman and Marmaras are all members of the Furman chapter\u2019s executive board.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo Lost Generation works to support refugee resettlement efforts in the Greenville area, and one of the main topics at this year\u2019s Global Engagement Summit was the refugee crisis,\u201d Luzynski, who came to Furman from Roanoke, Virginia, says. \u201cThat was how we kind of got tapped into it. But all of us also brought really unique interests outside of the refugee crisis that were also related to what the U.N. is working on right now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Litz, an Atlanta native, was adopted as an infant from China. Being seen as different by some has given her empathy for people who arrive in a strange country, and she\u2019d like others to share that empathy.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s important to make people aware that refugees aren\u2019t terrorists. They\u2019re fleeing from persecution,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s hard for people to conceptualize that . . . We\u2019re very blind to issues that we don\u2019t face.\u201d<\/p>\n

Walking into the U.N. headquarters is something Luzynski will never forget.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never in a million years would have expected during my senior year of undergraduate that I would be sitting in the general assembly hall of the United Nations headquarters. It was mind-boggling,\u201d she says. \u201cWalking into that hall and knowing that so many important decisions were being made there and so many important people were gathered there to try and make our world a better place \u2013 it was overwhelming.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An intensive immersion into humanity\u2019s most pressing and daunting problems has the potential to be demoralizing. For Furman senior McKenna Luzynski, however, last month\u2019s UNA-USA Global Engagement Summit at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":265,"featured_media":17797,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,19,17,65,16,32,61,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-department-page","category-biology","category-centers-and-institutes","category-institute-for-the-advancement-of-community-health","category-modern-languages-and-literature","category-politics-and-international-affairs","category-the-furman-advantage","category-top-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/265"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}