Contact: James Carskadon
STARKVILLE, Miss.—A senior industrial engineering major at Mississippi State will take part in a prestigious international program this summer after being named a Humanity in Action Fellow.
Trey Wallace, a Starkville native and member of the Judy and Bobby Shackouls Honors College, will travel to Warsaw, Poland, next month, where he will join students from around the world who are receiving the Humanity in Action Fellowship. Humanity in Action programs explore past and present examples of resistance to intolerance, with a goal of encouraging future leaders to be engaged citizens and responsible decision makers.
At MSU, Wallace has been involved with several campus organizations such as Alumni Delegates and the Student Association. He also helped start No Lost Children, a student organization that advocates for children of Syrian refugees through local educational programs and fundraising.
“Trey’s selection as a Humanity in Action Fellow recognizes his uncommon commitment to public service across the globe,” said Tommy Anderson, MSU professor of English and director of the Office of Prestigious External Scholarships. “He has spent much of his adult life working to make communities stronger by raising awareness of the global health disparities in underserved communities. I think Humanity in Action saw Trey’s keen understanding of how the global is inextricably tied to the local. Trey’s leadership at MSU is unique in that it shows other students that global service must emerge from a foundation that is committed to making local communities stronger too.”
Since coming to MSU, Wallace has studied abroad in France and Italy, in addition to completing internships in South Africa. Last year, he interned at St. Dominic Hospital in Jackson, where he assisted with efforts to better allocate resources and serve patients.
“I think there’s a lot of applications for industrial engineering in humanitarian work and human rights,” Wallace said. “I think most engineers end up working in industry, working on products, things like that. That’s great stuff to do, but I was really interested in the personal impact that you can have in humanitarian work. That’s what drew me to Humanity in Action and in a broader sense draws me to humanitarian work as an engineer.”
Wallace, who holds MSU’s Charles and Pat Lee Presidential Endowed Scholarship, said his international experiences at the university have prepared him for his upcoming fellowship. He plans to graduate from MSU in December and pursue graduate school in the fields of public health and international development.
“My goal is to work in non-profit management and humanitarian crisis response,” Wallace said. “While I’ve had some experience working with organizations related to these things, I haven’t had any formal classroom education about it. I also don’t know much about the history of human rights and humanitarian work throughout Europe. This program will give me more of the formal education that can go along with the experiential education I’ve had.”
The Humanity in Action program is interdisciplinary and features daily lectures and discussions with renowned academics, journalists, politicians and activists, as well as site visits to government agencies, non-profit and community organizations, museums and memorials. To learn more, see www.humanityinaction.org.
For more on MSU’s Bagley College of Engineering, visit www.bagley.msstate.edu. The Judy and Bobby Shackouls Honors College can be found at www.honors.msstate.edu.
MSU is Mississippi’s leading university, available online at www.msstate.edu