Every day, millions of pollutants circulate through the planet. As these pollutants enter the atmosphere, the Earth continues to heat up, leading to unforeseen weather catastrophes. This has been caused by the global desire for resources and energy without limits, causing the spending of these resources in an unsustainable way. Sustainability is needed to ensure that the future will have enough resources and for current global systems to cause less harm. Sustainability is urgently needed because inaction has led to the acceleration of environmental degradation. Climate change causing heat waves, flooding of coastal regions, and the melting of the ice floors has made it clear that the current rate of global industrial activity is not sustainable. Many sectors, such as energy and agriculture, contribute to accelerating temperatures. At a rigorous summer program, the California State Summer School for Mathematics and Science (COSMOS) at UC Irvine, I engaged in research of Sustainable Aviation Systems. I learned about new research towards more efficient aircraft designs through researching their energy outputs in comparison to the standard tube-and-wing. It is important that these sectors exist, to ensure travel and feeding a global population, but it is imperative that they coexist with sustainable standards. This research has inspired me to engage in future learning on how to improve technological systems to make them more sustainable. These issues affect all regions around the world, so it is also crucial that international cooperation is centered in sustainability. This is important because developed countries have the greatest carbon footprint on the planet and without similar environmental regulations to ensure sustainability, global environmental goals can never be reached. Global cooperation stems from individual participation in sustainability. Each individual should engage in being self conscious of their environmental impacts and take actions to make their daily living more sustainable.

My community of Santa Maria depends on the work of farmworkers to grow strawberries to stimulate its economy. In my sophomore year, I joined Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy, or CAUSE, an organization focused on social and environmental justice, to get a greater understanding of the issues needing attention in my community. I got involved in CAUSE’s main mission for these past years: informing the community about the health effects of pesticides and fighting for increased buffer zones of pesticide application near schools. This project taught me about how many farmworkers and their families are uninformed about the life-long health consequences of being in close contact with pesticides and how current regulations didn’t stop fields from spraying pesticides next to elementary and high schools in my city. I wanted to enact the changes CAUSE had in mind. In preparation for the Clean Air Fair, an event to bring together the community to inform them of these issues and to show them CAUSE’s efforts, I presented to classrooms at my high schools to promote the workshop I helped organize. This workshop informed families about their rights as farmworkers and taught them how to speak up about their health. Although it was not easy to have support from each classroom I presented in, I saw the impact in my work when I saw students I informed attending the fair. This experience taught me how my efforts of speaking up matters in informing my community towards a bigger issue. In college, I will pursue environmental sciences, with the hope of conducting valuable research to help communities facing environmental issues such as degradation and pollution. I want to research the root causes of these large-scale issues and their impacts on nearby communities. I hope to find ways to solve these problems and develop plans for reasonably reversing the damaging effects to bring together a more sustainable and healthier planet. I will take my skills of public speaking and project organization to give back to communities like mine that required grassroots efforts to make a difference in the issues they cared for. Now that I know how to organize and execute a project, I am ready to develop my own environmental advocacy efforts in college. I will use my college education to find solutions to environmental problems and provide a voice to ensure justice for underrepresented communities.

I moved to the United States from Vietnam when I was seven. Raised by a single mother who was simultaneously learning how to live in a new country, I went through the assimilation process on my own. I quickly learned the differences between my background compared to my peers when I entered elementary school. In a primarily Hispanic school, I faced bullying from others for the things I didn’t understand. In addition, having an unstable family expanded this gap. My mom worked long hours as a nail technician to take care of me and my sister and a divorce between her and my stepfather led me to further independence in my life and my education. Despite these circumstances, I became a motivated student and did my best in school. When I began high school, I was set on my dream of attending college to be the first in my family to reach a higher level of success. I didn’t want to become a nail technician like my grandmother and mother, a job they did for survival, but which brought no joy to their lives. I want to go to college to spend my future engaged in learning about and protecting the natural world I’m so fascinated about, a career I’m passionate about. My passion for nature emerged from taking AP Environmental Science in my junior year. This class helped me discover my love for nature and for solving global environmental issues. Initially intrigued by endangered species, I furthered my interest in dwindling species populations on a trip to the Gibbon Conservation Center. I learned how conservationists replicated the gibbons' natural habitat to protect them from habitat loss in Southeast Asia. It was fascinating to me how this niche solution of bringing the gibbons across the world prevented their extinction. This creative approach sparked my curiosity about what I could do to help protect species. I gained this insight when I joined UCLA biologists in their research to recover endangered California tiger salamanders. I set up tanks to imitate vernal pools the salamanders depended on for breeding; months later, I learned how to identify adult salamanders before releasing them into the wild. I took this chance to talk to real conservationists; so, while my teacher only required the class to ask one question, I kept bombarding the biologists with more questions regarding how trackers worked to identify such a small species and how they conducted research on a species so rare to find. This experience showed me how much I loved learning about the elements of the biodiversity around me and the methods of researching to create solutions. This summer, I seized the opportunity to conduct research for the first time at COSMOS, a competitive STEM program at UC Irvine, where I learned about alternative fuel cell technology and how it counters emission trade-offs. This learning inspired me to research how alternative wing configurations could improve the environmental impact of the commercial aircraft industry. Using research findings from universities currently testing unconventional designs, I developed a research poster comparing the Flying-V design to the traditional tube-and-wing. I found that the innovative design has higher fuel efficiency and lower carbon emissions. Pursuing environmental science at my future college will prepare me to achieve my career goals of making an impact, reviving endangered populations, reversing degradation, and finding solutions to global issues. Using the lessons of persevering through obstacles in my childhood, I will continue using my tenacity to work hard each day to pursue my goals of creating a better future for myself and protecting the planet.