Student: Milena Judd

Milena Judd has wanted to be a teacher since she can remember. She’s also very good at math, and that combination of interests brought her to East Carolina University.

She first visited ECU while a junior at Western Harnett High School for the ECU College of Education’s PIRATE program, where high school students are introduced to the profession in a three-day, on-campus experience. She liked it so much she participated again her senior year and decided to attend ECU.

One of Milena Judd’s favorite places at ECU is in the library’s math cave and lounge area.

“It just felt like it was meant to be,” said Judd, who enjoys building Legos, completing puzzles and solving problems. “I’m a very functional person. Knowing how things work, doing puzzles and putting things together, I feel like they all connect.”

Judd is majoring in math and math education and has been named a 2025 North Carolina Teaching Fellow. The competitive, merit-based forgivable loan program provides tuition assistance of up to $10,000 per year for qualified students committed to teaching elementary education, special education, science, technology, engineering or math in a North Carolina public school.

As a number enthusiast with an upbeat personality, Judd looks forward to the opportunity and challenge of getting her future students excited about math.

“I love math, and I feel like other people should get to see that viewpoint the way that I do,” she said. “Usually, a student walks into a math class and they’re like ‘ugh, I don’t want to be here,’ and I’m just like, ‘it could be fun.’”

She said ECU has prepared her with rigorous coursework and real-world experiences that get education students out in the community and in classrooms early. She also has served as a student leader for the PIRATE program, a full circle moment where her journey to becoming a teacher started.

During her freshman year, Judd lived in the education living learning community, where she met her closest friends and completed service hours by volunteering at the Greenville Community Garden and Martin Luther King Jr. and 9/11 events at ECU.

One of her favorite things about living in the LLC was the programming, which included visiting classrooms in other communities to learn more about how teachers teach in those areas.

Milena Judd, at left, participated in ECU’s PIRATE program in 2023 during her senior year of high school. The experience was a motivating factor in deciding to attend ECU. (Photo by Kristen Martin)

“I feel like they gave me a lot more opportunities than if I would have just come in as someone in the college, because we take all these trips and we’ll go to different schools and learn about different teaching styles and different schools. That, and I feel like the community, I always see a familiar face or two in the LLC. I’ve met my greatest friends in the LLC. I really feel like the LLC brings bonding and knowledge together, which is a pretty cool thing to have,” she said.

Judd also appreciates the caring College of Education faculty, especially Dr. Charity Cayton ’96 ’07, associate professor of mathematics education.

“I love Dr. Cayton. She goes out of her way to help me. She makes my life so much easier. Not only has she been my professor multiple times already but she’s also my advisor, so she’s always around. She even helped me study for my final last semester. She sat in her office for like three hours doing math questions together, and I left with so much more knowledge than I came in with,” she said.

Judd will have a short break between summer classes at Pitt Community College and the start of her junior year, which has a reputation for being the toughest, including Calculus II. “I’m terrified. But, if I get through it, then I can look back and say, ‘I got through that.’ So that’s my motivating factor. Being able to say that I did it.”

As a first-generation college student, Judd has a lot of cheerleaders in her hometown of Broadway as she works toward earning her bachelor’s degree in 2027. “Everybody is waiting for me to graduate and saying, ‘You’ve got to finish school,’” she said.