GREENVILLE, S.C.—A group of Furman University students will get the chance to swap ideas with world leaders as delegates to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in Singapore on Nov. 10-15.
Established in 1989, APEC seeks to improve trade among 21 member economies from Asia and the Pacific Rim. Students and educators are invited to participate in APEC meetings through the program “Voices of the Future for APEC.” To date, Furman students are the only U.S. undergraduates invited to the annual meeting.
Furman students have been to previous APEC conferences in Mexico, Vietnam, Peru, Australia, South Korea and Chile.
The delegates from Furman leaving for Singapore on Nov. 7 are all seniors. They are political science majors Dez Clodfelter of Walkertown, N.C., and Kelly Cressy of Wexford, Pa.; economics major Hannah Johnson of New Brighton, Minn.; and political science/economics major Cary Fontana of Columbia.
The Riley Institute of Government, Politics and Public Leadership at Furman is funding the trip, thanks in part to an endowment from the John I. Smith Foundation. The students selected for the trip underwent a rigorous application process that included in-depth analysis of an APEC policy issue.
Riley Institute executive director Don Gordon, who will accompany the students, said the delegation should have “an unprecedented opportunity to meet the president of Singapore and a variety of other heads of state and secretaries of state from the 21 economies that make up APEC. We hope that among those will be President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton.”
During the conference, students from different nations will live with each other and share their culture and ideas in addition to meeting with international policy makers and economists.
The students plan to blog about their trip and will take video cameras to record their experiences. Click here to keep up with the students on their blog or here for photos and blogs of previous Furman delegations to APEC.