Elhardt Named Lee’s BSS Distinguished Alumna Of The Year
Katie Johnson Elhardt received the 2020 Distinguished Alumnus of the Calendar year Award for Lee University’s Section of Behavioral and Social Sciences. This honor was announced throughout Lee’s virtual Homecoming celebration.
“In addition to becoming a excellent university student, Katie was just one of those undergraduate college students that sought out every possibility to understand and serve,” said Dr. Murl Dirksen, professor of anthropology and sociology at Lee. “Whether it was discovering a variety of gardening strategies or researching the role new music plays in cultures, there was practically nothing Katie could not or would not do.”
Ms. Elhardt graduated from Lee with a diploma in anthropology in 2010. As an undergraduate, she aided organize the Greenway Table, a neighborhood local community backyard garden, and assisted in setting up gardens in several housing jobs in Cleveland.
Though at Lee, she also served as a travel tutorial in Lee’s International Perspectives application and was a summer season intern in ethnomusicology at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C. Upon graduation, she acquired education in tropical agricultural development from ECHO Worldwide, a Christian nonprofit agricultural guidance agency fully commited to reducing hunger and improving upon the life of modest-scale farmers throughout the world through agricultural coaching and networking.
Currently, Ms. Elhardt performs with the BeerSheba Task, an agriculture coaching and discipleship middle in Senegal.
