Katie Parker
Katie has graduated with Honors degrees in History and International Studies. While Katie’s interests are many and varied, there is a theme throughout – social justice. Whether that is through her involvement in the Justice in Leadership and Community Committee, her work as the Program Coordinator in the Women’s Center, or her volunteer tutoring while studying abroad in Santiago, Chile, Katie consistently lives her respect for the individual and passion for social justice.
While Katie’s academic home is within History, but she’s become a familiar face in Women’s Studies, Ethnic Studies, the Writing Center, the Women’s Center, and the Honors College. She has served as President of the History Student Association, Co-President of the Feminist Majority Leadership Association, a student representative in the Honors and departmental search committees, a mentor within the Honors Activity and Advisory Committee, organizer of the “Intersecting Identities and Interaction: Overcoming the Barriers to Social Justice Conference”, and a guest speaker in Women’s Studies classes and the Corvallis branch of the American Association of University Women’s meeting.
During her very busy academic career, Katie also made time to study in Santiago, Chile for a semester. Katie’s coursework in Chile was taken with Chilean students, in Spanish, and included Latin American geography, Mapuche language and culture, Chilean theater, folklore, and contemporary issues. She also conducted research for her thesis, entitled “Reason as Race: Enlightenment Voyages of Discovery and their effect on 18th Century Racial Discourse”. Katie has received multiple awards throughout her time at OSU, including a Dean’s Scholarship, the Peterson Award for Excellence in the Study of History, an International Research Award, the Oregon Consular Corps International Studies Scholarship, and the Diversity Achievement Scholarship, among others. This fall, she is off to the University of Pittsburgh for the Graduate History Program as an Arts and Sciences Fellow with an emphasis in Atlantic intellectual history.
