By Jonathan Riggs | Photography by Stephanie Yantz

San Francisco native Kate Green is the rare college student who relishes writing academic papers.

“I love citations,” she admits.

When there’s nary a footnote to format, however, she is happiest exploring magazine-style journalism — especially as editor-in-chief of UCLA’s chapter of “Her Campus,” a national online student publication that focuses on college women’s lives, stories, interests and issues.

“Writing is agency. It allows people to get their ideas out to share,” Green says. “I’m especially interested in seeing how Gen Z women interact with my writing.”

Always sure that she would be an English major, Green was in her second year at UCLA when she added a community engagement and social change minor due to her interest in nonprofit work and advocacy. She deepened her involvement with both her major and her minor when she accepted a role as a UCLA Library peer research and writing specialist for the cluster course “Evolution of Cosmos and Life.”

(Specialists like Green have completed a cluster course — a yearlong, collaboratively taught, interdisciplinary learning community available to entering freshmen only — and are hired to serve as advisors and assistants to first-years in the program.)

Green was inspired to take the role due to her own transformative clusters experience.

“I’ve never been very good at science, so it was amazing to see I could finish all my science requirements just by completing the cluster program,” Green says. “What surprised me is how accessible they made the science and how much I loved it. I was no longer afraid of it.”

As a student during the pandemic, Green completed her own cluster courses virtually, which led to one of her favorite Bruin learning experiences.

“During an astronomy unit, they had us go for a walk every night in our neighborhoods, wherever we were living at the time, and draw diagrams of the moon so we could track its progress and phases,” she recalls. “I looked forward to it every night, walking with my mom and my little notepad, drawing the moon. It got me out of the house during a very dark time.”

A lover of Jane Austen, taekwondo and vegan cooking, Green is considering working with a children’s literacy nonprofit after graduation, but as she closes out her junior year, she’s focusing on the cluster students she supports.

“I was worried they wouldn’t reach out to me, since I’m not the professor, but I’ve already been getting emails and office-hour visits,” she says. “They want to have movie nights and all these fun activities — they’re really excited about the cluster program. That makes me proud, because I felt like I owed something to this great program, and I’m glad I can give back.”