Senior Katie Havens has spent the past four years here at SSU seizing every opportunity that has come her way. While majoring in Political Science, she has dabbled in sorority life, Summer Orientation, and being involved in Student Government.
“Sorority was the first thing that I got involved with,” said Havens. “I went through recruitment my freshman year so I’ve been involved with Greek Life since then.”
Within sorority she has held several different leadership positions. These positions not only helped her grow as a leader but also as a sister.
“I was the Corresponding Secretary, Club Congress Chair, and New Member Educator,” said Havens. “I loved being the New Member Educator, it was so fun! It was kind of insane. It was so many girls and being in charge of them was crazy ridiculous but it was so fun! It’s cute, they still call me mama.”
Even as a young freshman Havens knew that she wanted to do big things on this campus. That’s why she made the plunge to apply for the position of a Summer Orientation leader. To be the first face that a incoming SSU student see’s is a HUGE responsibility. Your attitude during the orientation can make or break their opinion of the school.
“I did link crew in High School and had a really good experience so I went into Summer-O right after my freshmen year,” said Havens. “That was when I realized I wanted to get more involved with SSU because I was learning so much about what campus had to offer. I just gained a lot of confidence from that.”
After being a Summer-O leader, Havens later went on to become a Team leader for the program and helped coordinate the program all year round.
Through orientation, Haven’s learned about all the different leadership positions around campus and decided to try some out before her time was up here.
“I’m involved with AS for my senior year,” said Havens. “Junior year I was the senator for Social Sciences. Now I’m the Statewide Issues Chair because it goes along more with my major.”
While in office, Havens, along with her fellow AS members have set out to work on some large projects to help better our school.
“We did a voter registration drive and that was kind of something that I was in charge of,” said Havens. “Now we’re working on doing an educational campaign to bring awareness to the fact that there’s a system wide 16-unit cap. So just making sure that students are aware of this issue. We’re just working on those things right now. Those are the bigger projects of the year that I’ve worked on and help put together.”
Her Position this year however has a completely different type of load then she’s taken on before.
“For my position I go to these meetings every month. It’s called the California State Student Association,” said Havens. “So representatives from every CSU campus go and we just kind of talk about issues going on in the state. We talk about advocacy things, that’s where ‘The Bucks Start Here’ stemmed out of. It’s kind of the state wide lobbying effort for the CSU’s. So I’m busy with that. It’s cool because I get to go to different places, like different CSU’s. I’ve seen Chico, Fresno, Fullerton, and Bakersfield through this position.”
Now as she’s approaching graduation, this senior has to start thinking about her future.
“My plan is to probably take a year off and just kind of figure my stuff out,” said Havens. “I really want to go to grad school. Either law school or some type of grad school in the political science realm. I want to work somewhere in government or politics.”
At the moment, Havens is working hard towards her goal of working in Government by being involved in so many outside projects.
“I’m currently working on a congressional campaign right now for an assembly member in the area who’s running for congress,” said Havens. “I’m also looking at other campaigns to work on since we have the election coming up. Anything I can get you know. I’m not even being picky!”
After the interview, Havens was offered a job working on campaign in Virginia! SSU expects great things from Havens in the near future!
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Sonoma chapter.