The Calvin B. DeWitt Leadership is the largest and most prestigious fellowship offered at the Au Sable Institute. With a value of US $5100, students must demonstrate academic excellence and a record of accomplishment with high potential for continued leadership in Christian environmental stewardship, much like that of Dr. Calvin DeWitt, the Institute’s Founding Executive Director. Cal displayed visionary leadership as he led Au Sable for its first two decades as an Institute, and engaged with the wider Christian community to care for God’s earth out of a joy for the good gift of creation and out of our responsibility as earthkeepers for serving and protecting it.
This year, Au Sable is honored to announce that the 2019 recipient of the Calvin B. DeWitt Leadership Fellowship is Keely Schultz of the University of Northwestern – Saint Paul (UNWSP)(Minnesota). Keely is a third-year Environmental Science and Business major at UNWSP, also completing minors in Spanish and Bible. This summer she will be enrolled in two courses , International Development and Environmental Sustainability (one course) and Ecological Agriculture at the Pacific Rim campus during Summer Session II.
Combining her efforts as a YECA Fellow with her role as a Student Senator, Keely has, at UNWSP, secured funding for additional compost bins, pursued the installation of solar panels on a campus building, and worked with the UNWSP Dining Services to reduce food waste.
Keely, a native Minnesotan from the town of Ham Lake, first began attending UNWSP while still in high school through Minnesota’s Post Secondary Educational Opportunity (PSEO) Program, taking her first biology class at UNWSP at the age of 16! Enrolled as a full-time, on campus student since the fall of 2016, Keely has served as a Teaching Assistant in Spanish, a Senator in UNWSP’s Student Government and member of the Senate’ Sustainability Committee, and Founder and Leader of the UNWSP Hiking Club, an organization which she started in 2018. But Keely’s activity and recognition extends beyond UNWSP. Chosen as a Plant Community Ecology Intern at the University of Minnesota’s famed Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve in 2018, Keely was also selected as a Climate Leadership Fellow by Young Evangelicals for Climate Action (YECA) in the same year. Combining her efforts as a YECA Fellow with her role as a Student Senator, Keely has, at UNWSP, secured funding for additional compost bins, pursued the installation of solar panels on a campus building, and worked with the UNWSP Dining Services to reduce food waste.
Kyle Meyaard-Schaap, National Organizer and Spokesperson for YECA, said of Keely, “I have spent over seven years recruiting, training, and interacting with Christian environmental leaders from across the country, and Keely is easily one of the most committed and passionate individuals I have met in that time.” Keely’s professor at UNWSP, Dr. Dale Gentry, describes Keely as “a positive and gregarious student with ambition…She is just the student and leader Northwestern aspires to attract and Au Sable would be wise to support.” Keely herself admits that she chose to combine studies in environmental science with business because of her keen interest in the social justice aspects of environmental study and her desire to someday work for a nonprofit organization. “I have come to realize that I greatly enjoy and am gifted at nonprofit work. I am interested in working with a nonprofit someday that focuses on the link between environmental and social justice.”
Whatever the future holds for Keely, all of us at Au Sable welcome her to Au Sable’s work and study this summer. Congratulations, Keely! We look forward to having you with us.