As a California native and natural explorer all my life, I am very passionate about preserving my native environment and wish

to share its beauty with others. At Cal Poly, I cofounded the Sierra Student Coalition and lead native plant hikes to support our mission of "education through exploration." After college, I gained hands on experience while working in the field with California State Parks to protect Californias native biodiversity. My passion for ecological restoration has recently grown while working to restore Vasona Creek at the West Valley Campus and inspired me to get my permaculture design certification. I want to dedicate my career to meaningful work that heals and preserves the environment, and inspire others to do the same. My interdisciplinary curriculum of Earth Sciences at Cal Poly has given me a comprehensive and scientific view on the natural environment. I have taken classes in the field that studied the plants, animals, earth (geology and soils), and human systems of California that are constantly interacting with each other. Also, with the pressing issues of our time, I chose to focus in sustainability to attempt to address the problems of our future. To learn how to make sustainable change equally accessible to all, I studied abroad in a rural mountainous farming village in Guatemala where I helped develop an Appropriate Technologies program. I focused on organic agriculture projects and worked with local farmers to develop sustainable solutions. However, I found it humbling to find that they had just as much to teach us about living with fewer resources as we thought we had to teach them. I was also an intern for the Green Jobs Corps where I collaborated between government, nonprofit, and business, applied for federal grants, and organized meetings and fundraisers to develop a pilot green jobs training program for at-risk youth. On top of all my work preserving the natural environment, I am also conscious of creating a sustainable future where humans can coexist in the natural environment. For my senior project, I was the Earth Scientist on an interdisciplinary team that developed a plan to sustainably redesign Detroit, MI by the year 2035, and entered the Living Cities International Design Competition. I published a paper entitled Growing The Urban Ecosystem in Detroit, where I outlined an urban agriculture plan to sustain the city as well as urban forests and ecological corridors to integrate the native environment. I would like to start a career in ecological restoration because I will offer high quality ecological work while minimizing the impact on the environment. Sincerely, Sean Basalyga