Environmental Leaders Nominated for Udall Scholarship
The Udall Scholarship recognizes college sophomores and juniors for leadership, public service, and commitment to issues related to Native American nations or to the environment. The Udall Scholarship honors the legacies of Morris Udall and Stewart Udall, whose careers had a significant impact on Native American self-governance, health care, and the stewardship of public lands and natural resources. We’re proud to share with you the names and biographies of the Northeastern University students nominated for this important award.
Emily Fochtman COS’25, Environmental and Sustainability Science/Economics
Mentors: Cristina Herren, Michael Hoppmann, Tsegay Tekleselassie
Home State: North Carolina
Emily’s passion for public service and the environment began before she arrived at Northeastern University. While still in high school, Emily served as a member of the Environmental Committee on Representative Brian Fitzpatrick’s 1st Congressional Student Task Force. Here, she submitted legislative proposals and presented ideas to reduce carbon emissions for her school district. During this time, she also became President of Students Acting for a Greener Environment and served as a translator for the Coastal Watershed Council in Santa Clara, California, educating local communities on the importance of local flora and fauna. At Northeastern, Emily has continued to develop as a leader for the environment, developing research skills through an XN Network Research Project and joining the EcoScholars student group to provide environmental education at local elementary schools in the Boston area. Emily’s efforts in the realm of environmental education extend to her peer group, as well. On campus, Emily has served an important role as a teaching assistant for one of the university’s environmental data science courses. In this work, Emily has taken a lead role in helping peers transform massive amounts of data into compelling narratives through data visualization in R. Emily recognizes the importance of both statistics and storytelling to environmental advocacy. As she moves forward in her academic and professional career, Emily hopes to utilize similar big data approaches to help corporations understand the potential profitability of responsible environmental, social and governance strategies and the challenges and risks of status quo approaches to the climate crisis.
Mya Heard Bouve’24, Health Sciences
Mentors: Phil Brown, Ashleigh Shields, Emma Newcombe
Home State: California
Mya Heard hopes to pursue a career in environmental health policy with the aim of both protecting people from pollutants and ensuring the built environment supports population health. Raised in California, Mya’s interest in this area was borne out of experience with the wildfires that have raged in that part of the country. Witnessing poor, disabled, and unhoused people across the Pacific Northwest suffer disproportionately as a result of the extreme heat and lack of appropriate infrastructure convinced her to connect her interest in health with environmental advocacy. At Northeastern, Mya has worked with Professor Phil Brown to study per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances or PFAS, the highly toxic fluorinated “forever chemicals” linked to cancer, immunotoxicity, and reproductive health issues. Mya’s research, in particular, has been focused on understanding how governance of these toxic chemicals has worked on the state and federal levels. Mya is currently a volunteer legal intern for the Department of Justice Environment and Natural Resources Division in its Environmental Enforcement Section (EES), working as part of the broader team to enforce laws such as the Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, and CERCLA, among other environmental statutes. At Northeastern University, Mya is a Bouve College Ambassador who mentors freshmen, a member of both the club running team and the Multiethnic Student Union, and the Lead Circulation Assistant for the university library.
Amara Ifeji CSSH’24, Political Science with minors in Environmental Studies and Philosophy
Mentors: Nathan Broaddus, Lustila Getty, Olivia Griset
Home State: Maine
Arriving at Northeastern in the fall of 2020 from Bangor, Maine, Amara is already doing powerful work at the nexus of the environment, anti-racism, immigration, and economics. A first-generation American born in Nigeria who came to the US when she was two years old and moved to Maine at nine years old, Amara recognized her difference — and the difference she could make — early on. Confronted with racism as a young person in Maine, the least racially diverse state in the Union, Amara set about creating a better learning environment in the Deep North not simply for herself, but also for all of her peers. Amara’s first efforts took the shape of a Multicultural Student Union (MSU), a safe space where BIPOC students could share their experiences and organize for a more inclusive school environment. The group’s efforts eventually spurred a recalcitrant superintendent and school board into action. Already a sophisticated intersectional leader, Amara was simultaneously growing interested in the ways that environmental hazards disproportionately impact people of color. Focusing particularly on the human-made water crisis in Flint, Michigan, Amara began conducting research using plants and fungi to remediate heavy metals, earning the 2019 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair Best of Category and First Place Awards in Plant Sciences, as well as the 2020 Regeneron Science Talent Search Top Scholars recognition. Amara also planned and ran an environmental STEM learning opportunity to help 20 of her peers with marginalized identities foster a passion for STEM learning and the environment. Since joining us at Northeastern as an Ujima Global Leader, Amara’s efforts to make the world a better place have continued apace, even as she has worked full-time at the Maine Environmental Education Association. In her political science studies, Amara has earned impressive marks, bringing what she has learned in the political trenches to bear in the classroom and deploying what she has learned in the school in the real world, moving a landmark bipartisan climate education bill, LD 1902, through the Maine legislature and into law.
Benjamin Lanava COE’24, Environmental Engineering
Mentors: Annalisa Onnis-Hayden, Jessica Ormsby, Alina Dess
Home State: Massachusetts
Benjamin Lanava hopes to find sustainable and affordable solutions to two of the most pressing environmental challenges of today: achieving carbon sequestration and providing communities around the world with access to safe, clean drinking water. Still early in his career, Ben has already done significant work to advance both of these goals. To prepare for this career in sustainability, Ben studies environmental engineering and has sought to complement his education with a number of important projects in the field. Ben’s work with water has been focused on two large projects. In one of these projects, for which he earned a PEAK Experiences Award, Ben has been researching plant-based strategies for the removal of harmful contaminants (PFAS and heavy metals). While this project focuses on the provision of clean water, Ben has also focused his efforts on providing basic access to water as a leader in Northeastern’s chapter of Engineers Without Borders. As a project lead for the chapter, Ben has been organizing both his peers and a large, rural community in Uganda to implement a solar-powered submersible pump for water treatment and distribution systems there. Recognizing the power of solutions that are themselves sustainable, Ben has also developed an interest in creating similar tools for carbon capture, working to create a passive, sustainable method for the solubilization of mining waste that combines with CO2 in the atmosphere to form useful products in the water treatment process through his co-op at Allonia. On campus, Ben serves as the Vice President of the New England Water & Environment Association, where he advances awareness and encourages engineers to pursue careers in civil engineering focused on environment and sustainability. Aside from organizing numerous park and river clean-ups, Ben is spearheading efforts with other members of NEWEA to make community gardens around Boston more accessible for people with various disabilities.