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Mia Docto’s interest in education, social justice, science
and sustainability made her an excellent candidate for the Chancellor’s
Undergraduate Education for a Sustainable Living Program Internship.
During the time of her internship, Mia was a fifth-year Earth Science
major, with a concentration in environmental geology. From her studies
she came to better understand the incredibly complex ways the biotic
and abiotic interrelate and the importance of sustaining the geologic
cycles. As a freshman, Mia worked with Calpirg to create the city
of Santa Cruz’s Earth Day festival. During her sophomore and
junior year, Mia began working with the Program in Community and
Agroecology (PICA) on campus and community gardens. In the winter
of her junior year, Mia attended the Sierra Institute in Belize
which opened her to the many sustainable solutions to both social
inequalities and environmental problems. That spring, Mia became
a student in the Education for Sustainable Living Program’s
(ESLP) 2-unit section. This class was particularly amazing to Mia
because of its focus on sustainability and the educational model
it used. During her forth year, Mia led a 5-Unit Action Research
Team on eco-art and personal sustainability. Facilitating this course
gave Mia an incredible understanding of the importance of action
research, experiential and service learning.
Mia came into her internship with great enthusiasm for the sustainability
movement she was a part of. During her internship, Mia developed
and enhanced many aspects of the Education for a Sustainable Living
Program. During fall and winter quarters, Mia developed and improved
the winter training seminar (a course offered to support students
facilitate action research teams in spring). Mia worked on creating
a curriculum for the course and mentored four students who were
developing projects to implement sustainable policies on campus.
Mia helped develope the 5-Unit curriculum for the large ESLP lecture
in Spring. Mia sat on the staff evolution subcommittee for the Student
Environmental Center and the Education for a Sustainable Living
Program, supporting and managing staff for the two organizations.
Mia also focused a lot of her time on documenting the organization
and creating a training manual for future organizers. Mia presented
her work and the work of her fellow organizers to students, staff
and administrators around the nation at the second Smart and Sustainable
Conference hosted by the Environmental Protect Agency and the Association
for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education.
Mia’s greatest achievement this year was collaboratively creating
a vision for ESLP’s spring course and for the organization
as a whole. Mia worked extremely hard to gather information from
current and past organizers to support the organization sustain
and grow in the future years to come. The CUIP class assisted Mia
in many ways. The course offered Mia an incredible pool of knowledge
on the structure of the University, access to the staff and administrators
and power students have to help the administration create a better
university.
Mia’s future plans are to work in sustainability in one form
or another. She has many dreams for her life and plans to live out
all of them. She is interested in the leading outdoor educational
courses on sustainability and natural history. She also hopes to
work with non-profit organizations, bringing sustainable technologies
to low-income communities. She is interested in further studying
water science and policies, and working on water conservation and
clean water access. She believes she will succeed in creating a
career combining all of her passions. Most of all, Mia will work
to spread love and hope throughout her life to all creatures on
this planet.
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