Flourishing Fellows

As part of Emory’s focus on Student Flourishing, the Flourishing Fellows program seeks to foster resilient, inclusive, and relationship-based communities on campus. This program will bring together a group of 12-15 diverse student leaders to be trained in the work of community-building, and then actively engage their peers and their communities.

Sponsored by the Office of the Provost and the Office of Spiritual and Religious Life, the Flourishing Fellows can only work if students are invited to bring all the aspects of themselves to the table, from religious and spiritual beliefs to racial and ethnic identity to gender and sexual orientation and more.

The Flourishing Fellows program emphasizes the inherent value and the sacredness of human-to-human connections. Students can access the sense of wonder and awe that is at the heart of our wisdom traditions simply by making the time and the space to truly encounter each other, and hopefully thereby build friendships and community connections that will help them flourish at Emory and beyond.

For questions or to learn more, please contact staff lead Rabbi Jordan Braunig.

Application and Flourishing Fellow Position Description

This program seeks 12-15 full-time undergraduate students to serve as Flourishing Fellows for the 2024-2025 academic year. We seek candidates from diverse spiritual, religious, nonreligious, and ethical backgrounds. Specific responsibilities of the Flourishing Fellows include:

Participate in two-day off-campus retreat away from campus to bond as a group and to take a deep dive into the work of listening, connecting, and developing friendships. Flourishing Fellows will arrive back on campus with a toolbox for meeting new peers and deepening relationships with existing friends.
Participate in a weekly lunch meeting, which will allow fellows to further develop skills, continue bonding as a group, and work as a group to manage the challenges they face.
Coordinate coffee/tea meetings with 40 fellow Emory students over the academic year. Engagements might happen in the DCT or at Kaldi’s (Fellows will have a coffee budget) or strolling around campus. In these conversations, Flourishing Fellows will be tasked with creating a reflective space for delving deeper, making connections, and imagining innovative opportunities for community engagement.
- Fellows can develop different ways to engage students for these meetings–they might start with acquaintances, or advertise the opportunity to meet for coffee and a meaningful conversation, or potentially even receive a referral for a coffee chat.

Participate in biweekly one-on-one supervision meetings with the program director for coaching and guidance.

Qualifications:

Must be in good academic standing
Must be full-time undergraduate student for the entire 2024-2025 academic year

Application:

Deadline to apply: April 4, 2024

Apply here.

For questions, please contact jordan.braunig@emory.edu.

Impact statements from a similar peer institution program:

Not many people get the opportunity to get to know others on such a deep level, but being a fellow gave me that opportunity and the power to keep digging deeper!

-A.Z., Chemistry PhD candidate, New Haven, CT

I call upon the listening skills that I developed in the fellows program nearly every time that I walk into a patient’s room. I will be a better doctor because of it.

-Y.S. 3rd Year Medical Student, Cincinnati, OH

I've found my fellow-ing skills to be especially helpful when tackling social dynamics of group projects at business school. I actually had an experience where one member of a group project was creating a lot of friction and awkward misunderstandings--I took them out for coffee community-building-fellow-style and got to know them/their current struggles better. After that, the project work went super smooth, and the group benefited as a whole.

-S.W., Marketing Content Manager, Stockholm, Sweden