May ISAT graduate earns scholarship for graduate research in South Africa

Gabriela Fleury, a 2014 integrated science and technology graduate, has been selected to receive up to $30,000 from Rotary International to do graduate research in South Africa.

The Skelton/Jones Scholarship from Rotary International District 7570, which covers western Virginia and northeastern Tennessee, can be used to fund one year of graduate study at a recognized university in a country other than the United States or Canada.

• Scholarship applicants must be planning studies that lead to sustainable, high-impact outcomes in one of the following six areas of focus: peace and conflict prevention/resolution, disease prevention and treatment, water and sanitation, maternal and child health, basic education and literacy, economic and community development.
• Fleury, who concentrated in geographic science and minored in theater, completed an honors thesis on addressing ways to mitigate human-wildlife conflict in the Amboseli region of southwestern Kenya.
• She plans to continue her research on general human and wildlife conflict with a focus on the hidden costs of such conflict as well as poverty alleviation. Her work fits the conflict prevention/resolution and economic and community development requirements for the scholarship.
• Fleury will attend either the University of Cape Town, Witwatersrand University or the University of Pretoria and will likely begin her studies in January 2016. She will pursue a degree in either conservation biology or environmental science

More information about Fleury's research at JMU is available on the JMU website.