Maggie Rudick

In Maggie Rudick's long list of experiential learning opportunities as a Cornell student, three stand out for her: Wilderness Politics in northern Minnesota, a semester in Tanzania, and an international student symposium at the World Bank in Washington, D.C.

Wilderness Politics includes an extended journey in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Rudick remembers being awoken at 5:00 A.M. one morning to witness a family of moose in their island campground.

"This moment put the course and the canoe trip into perspective for me," she says.  "The Wilderness Act was created to protect these and other species who call the Boundary Waters home. This seemingly endless exchange between moose and man will always be remembered when I evaluate my role in this world."

While in Tanzania, she remembers meeting a young woman her own age on a ferry to Kigamboni Beach. The woman was studying English, and Rudick discovered many errors in her textbook.

"After the ferry, she invited me to her home to meet her family and we spent hours correcting her textbook and practicing language with each other. When I had returned to the United States, she had written me a beautiful letter, all in English, and I wrote her back in Swahili. I hope we can continue this friendship through letters."

Perhaps most meaningful of all was the three-day symposium at the World Bank.

"I met 200 young people, all in undergraduate, graduate, or doctorate study, and we discussed three of the Millennium Development Goals. Eventually, my committee wrote a proposal for each of these MDGs to help alleviate poverty worldwide. The proposal was sent to the United Nations and discussed during their Geneva Conference."

Rudick's endeavors also include a two-block Cornell Fellowship in her sophomore year, during which she developed a comprehensive outline of all trail-related plans, priorities, contacts, and resources in Linn County, Iowa, for the Fifteen-in-5 Trails Initiative. And during the summer of 2007, she applied her Wilderness Politics experiences in Idaho while leading youth crews in creating and maintaining trails as part of a five-week Americorps environmental education program.

These experiences and others have led Rudick, a politics major with an anthropology minor, to sign up for a role with the agricultural and forestry extension of the Peace Corps in sub-Saharan Africa after graduation. She plans to eventually work for the Foreign Service or to pursue graduate studies in a sustainability program.