Mia-Marie Fields ’24 Honored as Unsung Hero
Our Time Has Come Scholar Mia-Marie Fields ’24 was honored in front of the Syracuse University community as an Unsung Hero during the 39th Annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration, held in the JMA Wireless Dome on Jan. 21.
The Unsung Hero Award is given to community members, students, faculty and staff who have made a positive impact on the lives of others but are not widely recognized for their contributions. The awards were created to honor Dr. King’s vision of creating positive change in a troubled world. Fields exemplifies the values of scholarship, service, social justice and inclusion.
“The work I have done in my four years at Syracuse University has always been rooted in helping individuals whose voices needed to be heard and using my campus resources to help provide spaces for underrepresented students to feel welcome,” she says. “I can proudly say that this mission was accomplished with the help other students, faculty, and staff at SU that shared the same vision."
A biomedical engineering and neuroscience major in the College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS), Fields helped develop a portable breast cancer detection device addressing healthcare inequities in resource-limited countries. She assisted in updating the Dean’s Advisory Panel in ECS and is president of the Society of Women Engineers. A Posse Scholar from Miami, she is also a Remembrance Scholar and the College Marshall for ECS. A member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Fields serves as her chapter’s community service chair and volunteers every weekend in the Syracuse community. Fields worked with a team to re-design the interior of 119 Euclid (now named the Barner-McDuffie House), a space dedicated to Black culture. She also introduced Kevin Richardson H’20 of the Exonerated 5 at the Black Excellence Gala. Prior to this award, she served as a member of the MLK Celebration student planning committee for three years.
Fields says being named an Unsung Hero is an honor much bigger than her alone. “It's for the Black and Latinx girls and boys in the melting pot of Miami, with dreams that might seem too far to reach; for my mother from Puerto Rico that came to the States to give her children access to more opportunities for our success; and for my school mentors that saw my strengths before I did and nudged me in the right direction to make a positive impact in the community,” she says.
"As a fellow OTHC scholar and this year's MLK Celebration student co-chair. I am incredibly proud of Mia-Marie Fields, as she exudes the life and spirit of Dr. King through her leadership and social justice for underrepresented communities with her involvement with 119 Euclid, the Black Excellence Gala and more,” adds Leondra Tyler ’24. “But most importantly, Mia has a warm and humble energy. She lights up every room she walks into, and I am looking forward to seeing all the amazing things she will contribute to."