In Brief

from Honor Bound Spring/Summer 2023

Alumni Spotlight

Drexel Students Host First-Ever Youth Conference on Climate

In an era demanding environmental action and equity, students are advancing community-centered climate solutions through collaborative research, education, civic engagement and public programming. Over 130 delegates from across the country came together in September for America’s first ever Local Conference of Youth (LCOY USA), hosted at Drexel and the Academy of Natural Sciences. The three-day conference was organized by Drexel undergraduates along with a team of youth organizers across the country.

Delegates at the conference drafted the United States’ National Youth Statement on Climate, representing the voice of a young generation and its climate demands to help protect future generations. The national statement was submitted for inclusion in the Global Youth Statement, which was later presented at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in November in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. LCOY organizers also traveled to Washington D.C. to present the outcomes of LCOY USA to Brenda Mallory, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality and a member of the National Climate Taskforce.

“Organizing America’s first-ever LCOY USA was a complete moonshot idea, and the initial buy-in we received was based on the belief in our mission to amplify young voices — not only in climate action, but in general in the United States,” explains Atharva Bhagwat, a fifth-year custom-design major studying computing technology for sustainability and society. “We hoped to connect youth activists not only with each other, but with the global movement in climate action. It was surreal to see this idea come so far and become reality.”

Last year, Bhagwat and fellow LCOY co-organizer Sarah Wetzel, BA/MPH, public health ‘23, traveled to the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow with funding from the Pennoni Honors College and Office of Global Engagement. The students built on this experience to team up with youth from across the United States and organize the first LCOY USA.

When applications to become a delegate opened in early August, numerous responses poured in from both Drexel and across the country. In the end, the LCOY team selected over 130 delegates from 24 states to attend.

“When we were reviewing delegate applications, we were only reading a few words about these individuals,” says Bhagwat. “They were all very impressive people, but to actually see them — having traveled from across the country to be here in person — was noteworthy. When you put a group of climate activists in one room, there’s bound to be striking and engaging conversations going on. Being in that environment was rewarding."

— Christina Papadopoulos

Going for Gold

Four Drexel students have been selected as Goldwater Scholars this year, a new record for the institution. The Goldwater Scholarship honors juniors and seniors who have distinguished themselves as emerging researchers and are committed to pursuing research careers in STEM. Students must be nominated by their institutions to apply, and Drexel selected five exceptional nominees from a competitive pool of applicants last fall. Nominees spent three months working closely with a UREP advisor and faculty mentors to revise their applications for the national competition. Nationwide, the Goldwater Scholarship selected 413 Scholars from 1,267 nominees put forward by 427 colleges and universities. Drexel’s newest Goldwater Scholars are:

Put it in Writing

In teaching his English 100: Introduction to Composition course, writer Marek Makowski, chose not to teach from decades-old anthologies and dust-collecting artifacts, but from new writers. He wanted to push his students out of their high school bubbles and he gave them a lesson he’d recently learned himself: Explore the everyday object; chairs have as much importance as philosophy or love. He then wrote about their writing in a 2021 essay, “Who are the Writers Now?” featured in The Smart Set, Pennoni’s online arts and culture journal. Makowski’s essay was recently listed as a notable essay in Best American Essays.

“These were 18-year-olds used to writing about symbols and deeper meaning in long high school essays they hated,” Makowski wrote. “They were used to typing extra words in each line to fill out each page. They were trained to write like robots, without style or voice, without histories or heartbeats in the fingers that pressed the keys, machines for consulting SparkNotes and producing what they thought their teachers wanted them to say.”

Read the essay in full here:

Putting Their Research on Display

Pennoni Honors College’s Undergraduate Research & Enrichment Programs supported several students by arranging and funding accommodations as well as $250 travel grants for expenses to the National Collegiate Research Conference, hosted by Harvard University each year to promote and celebrate undergraduate research. This January, along with attending keynote speaker sessions and workshops, Honors College students presented the following posters:

Alyssa Kemp, BS environmental engineering ’25 “A Community-Focused Analysis of Heat Mitigation Techniques in Hunting, Park, Philadelphia”