UA Graduate Students selected as a finalist for MIT Solve Indigenous Communities Fellowship!

UA graduate students Chantel Harrison and Jaymus Lee were recently selected as a finalist for this year's prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT Solve Indigenous Communities Fellowship with their project called Indigeponics: Resiliency & Economic Development. This project is aimed at creating an indigenous space in controlled environment agriculture for tribal economic development and community resiliency through training and knowledge sharing.

Ms. Harrison and Mr. Lee are both graduate students with the UA Controlled Environment Agriculture Center and also Indige-FEWSS Trainees, a program of the UA Indigenous Resilience Center. They shared: “we are very honored to have been selected, and we appreciate the individuals and programs at UArizona (Haury Program, Campus Sustainability, CEAC, WGRC, Guerrero Center, NASA) and beyond who have supported us throughout the Indigeponics projects.”

If selected they could receive funding of $10,000 to launch Indigeponics into the next phase of development. The Solve Teams will be announced September 18th.

Until then their project is participating in the MIT Community Voting Challenge. You can vote for Indigeponics: Resiliency & Economic Development by Sept. 16 at 12 midnight ET. The Challenges with the most votes will receive $2,000. To vote, click on this link to the Indigeponics Solution page then click on the purple tab labeled as "Log In to Vote" under their project title.

Congratulations to Ms. Harrison and Mr. Lee on this accomplishment and all the work, and wishing them all the best!