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Environmental Studies, Spanish Major Katie O’Neil Wins Fulbright

Katie O’Neil, who graduated in December with degrees in environmental studies and Spanish, has won a Fulbright Scholarship to teach English and work on a project devoted to sustainability in Cali, Colombia, starting in October.

SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 8, 2019— Katelyn (Katie) O’Neil, who graduated in December with degrees in environmental studies and Spanish, has won a Fulbright Scholarship to teach English and work on a project devoted to sustainability in Cali, Colombia, starting in October.

Originally from Freeport, Maine, O’Neil aspires to be an international teacher —and already has extensive experience teaching and living abroad.  

As a high schooler, she worked or lived in Spain and Nicaragua. After graduating early as a junior, she lived in Mexico, where she worked on environmental education. She also spent time at a nonprofit housed in a Guatemala City garbage dump, where she taught adult literacy and helped start a library.

While at SCU, O’Neil studied in Peru as part of a program focused on indigenous people and globalization with the School of International Training. She conducted research on environmental and economic sustainability in a community in the Andes, and even learned to speak some of their Quechua language.

Environmentalism is a family affair for O’Neil, whose family composts and grows their own food in coastal Maine. Her mother works in environmental policy for the Maine League of Conservation Voters, and helped get passed the new law banning styrofoam in Maine, a first in the nation. Her brother studied environmental science at Colby College, before starting an aquaculture company growing scallops.

O’Neil also taught English as a Second Language through Santa Clara Community Action Program (SCCAP) to a female custodian at SCU. “She is the most determined person I’ve ever met,” said O’Neil of her ESL student from El Salvador. “She’s so inspirational, so committed to learning every morning, even when she’d been up all night working, cleaning up after us. It didn’t really leave much room for me to feel sorry for myself in any moment of academia.”

O’Neil also  took five Experiential Learning for Social Justice courses at SCU (which only requires one), including joining a reflection group with the Las Madres mother’s group in the Washington Neighborhood of San Jose, working with immigrants at the Mayfair Community Center, and learning about their problems with food scarcity. She also worked in the Bronco Urban Garden.

During the summer before she graduated, O’Neil was an associate with AmeriCorps in Maine, where she learned to write grant proposals and helped run a food pantry and a weekend food-in-a-backpack program for school kids.

In the summer between her sophomore and junior year, she participated in the food waste program of SCU’s Center for Food innovation and Entrepreneurship (CFIE, formerly named the Food and Agribusiness Institute.) There, she helped quantify the amount of produce local farms leave behind, as part of an effort to find ways to reduce such waste. At CFIE, “I got to see an angle of the tech world that I didn’t even know existed,” she said.

O’Neil was one of 11 Fulbright semi-finalists from SCU in the current academic year. Three of them—O’Neil, James Wang ’19 and Sammi Bennett ’19—won Fulbrights, and three were named alternates—Areli Hernandez ’19; Gen Kimura ’19; and Erin Ronald ’19.

 

About the Fulbright Program
The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. The primary source of funding for the Fulbright Program is an annual appropriation made by the U.S. Congress to the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations, and foundations in foreign countries and in the United States also provide direct and indirect support. Recipients of Fulbright grants are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields. The program operates in more than 155 countries worldwide. For further information please visit eca.state.gov/fulbright.

About Santa Clara University
Founded in 1851, Santa Clara University sits in the heart of Silicon Valley—the world’s most innovative and entrepreneurial region. The University’s stunningly landscaped 106-acre campus is home to the historic Mission Santa Clara de Asís. Ranked the No. 1 regional university in the West by U.S. News & World Report, SCU has among the best four-year graduation rates in the nation and is rated by PayScale in the top 1 percent of universities with the highest-paid graduates. SCU has produced elite levels of Fulbright Scholars as well as four Rhodes Scholars. With undergraduate programs in arts and sciences, business, and engineering, and graduate programs in six disciplines, the curriculum blends high-tech innovation with social consciousness grounded in the tradition of Jesuit, Catholic education.  For more information see www.scu.edu.

Media Contact
Deborah Lohse | SCU Media and Internal Communications | dlohse@scu.edu | 408-554-5121

 

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