Kate Swenson is adding her voice to the call for action.

Kate, a UHC student, isn’t studying environmental science and she doesn’t have dreams of becoming a UN ambassador, but when she was given the opportunity to attend the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen with 14 other students, she went for it. “We went with the hope of influencing the outcome of the negotiations by adding our voices to the youth constituency and by directly interacting with negotiators from around the world and more specifically with the US negotiators. The decisions being made in Copenhagen literally have the power to determine what the world is going to look like in the future, and I personally wanted to see how the people making such heavy decisions handle that responsibility.”

Surprisingly for Kate and for the rest of the world, it was the events that happened outside of the negotiations that made many of the headlines. “The events that took place outside the negotiations were more significant in my mind because they demonstrated how many people around the world are fed up with the inaction of our leaders and how the climate change movement is truly the largest social and environmental justice movement in the world today.”

Kate filmed and blogged about the 100,000 person march that took place outside of the negotiations. “I spent the day walking through the most diverse crowds of people I could ever imagine, watching individuals from all over the world come together to not only demand action from our world leaders but also to recognize each other as global citizens and to stand in solidarity with one another… Seeing the diversity of the crowd and the passion and energy that spread through the city was truly moving to me.” 

So, how did such a powerful experience affect her daily life here at OSU? “Ironically, many of the things I experienced in Copenhagen made me want to focus more on a local level. It made me realize that often times … we are far more effective at creating change in the environments that we are familiar with and among the communities that we are a part of.” Kate is a good example of this as she works at the Student Sustainability Center on campus.

In addition to being a world traveler, Kate is a Nutrition major and a Spanish minor. She says that the Honors College has really enhanced her college experience. “I love the intimacy of the Honors College. As someone who doesn't learn well in 500-person lecture halls and likes to have real conversations about what I'm learning instead of regurgitating information onto scan-tron sheets, I appreciate classes of 20 students, most of which consist of participatory discussion rather than lecture.”

For now, Kate is focusing on enjoying her college experience and hasn’t completely decided on a career. “I'm trying to keep my options as open as possible, and I have a really hard time limiting myself to one field or one career.” We here at the Honors College think that Ambassador Swenson has a nice ring to it though, don’t you think?