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Sofia Cooper STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

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PHOTOGRAPHY BY MELISSA WHITE

With AP scholar status as well as the Hispanic National Recognition Award to her name, this seventeen-year-old Mission College Preparatory Catholic High School senior is preparing for a bright future.

What extra-curricular activities are you involved in?I have been dancing at the Academy of Dance since I was eight and am a Company Member and mentor with the Civic Ballet of San Luis Obispo. I credit this program for much of the personal and creative growth I have experienced in nine years of performing. I have also been fortunate enough to letter on the Varsity Women’s Soccer team at Mission College Prep [MCP] since I was a freshman. I am a co-founder and leader of MCP’s Social Justice Club. As an MCP student, I have served as a Royal Ambassador, a selected mentor and tutor, and a leader of several retreats, including Kairos. As a means of pursuing my passion in health care, I have volunteered and shadowed at Community Health Centers in Oceano and at Hospital San Miguel in Villa Serrano, Bolivia, endeavors which have allowed me to emulate the real-life responsibility and schedule of a healthcare worker. I’ve also spent my time volunteering in several other projects, like tutoring at Pacheco Elementary and Election Day ballot collecting.

What is important to you outside of high school? Learning about global change through a course in environmental science, along with some outside reading on the subject, has made environmental justice and the fight against climate change more and more important to me. Along with incomplete coverage and criminal censorship of the issue, we are in denial. It isn’t until we accept the issues through an educated lens that we can genuinely put effort into helping it. We have many ways to renewably create change, it is just a means of putting them into action: solar, wind, hydrogen fuel-cell technology, hybrids, green-roofs, geothermal power stations, etc. Environmental justice is something I hope to continue studying and proactively supporting.

Do you have a career path in mind? I would love to eventually become a physician who is actively involved in public policy. As much as I enjoy the intricate science, I equally want to prioritize activism to bridge the gaps that produce medical insecurity. I want to aid the efforts to make healthcare more accessible and remedying medical inequities across several fronts. I feel as though this path and vocation includes my passion for the living sciences as it does a life of service.

Where will you attend college? I recently committed to University of California, Berkeley under the College of Letters and Science. I intend to double major in Molecular and Cell Biology and Public Health. I feel super grateful to have been granted the opportunity to study at the hub of several revolutionary technologies that have serious implications in the future (for example CRISPR tech), and to become a golden bear. SLO LIFE to smart, eclectic, art

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