Undergraduate Programs

Student Spotlight

Kate Mobley

I am in my fourth year of school at Indiana University and pursuing a double major in Religious Studies and an Individualized Major with a minor in English. My Individualized Major is a combination of Urban and Environmental Studies with a focus on the work of sustainability in cities. I am specifically interested in community building and firmly believe that the first step towards a more sustainable world is to strengthen ties between people and their environment. Common spaces must be created and preserved so that the work of creating and celebrating our future can begin!

To enact this in the Bloomington community, I am working with children from Middle Way House/The Rise and The Boys and Girls Club of Crestmont in conjunction with Bloomington Parks and Recreation’s Crestmont Community Garden. This opportunity is really exciting to me because I am getting the chance to incorporate many of my passions into my final project—I love working with children, I love working outdoors, and I am firmly committed to using my energy to build community and reconnect people to our environment. I am also traveling to Central America this summer to study Permaculture and sustainable community development techniques. I will be spending around two months in ecovillages learning sustainable solutions to our current culture’s problems in a hands-on environment.

Within my Religious Studies degree, I have focused more heavily on eastern traditions with a special interest the religions of India. This fall, I have been an undergraduate teaching intern for Professor Haberman’s Hinduism class. The opportunity to work closely with Professor Haberman has been quite rewarding, and in addition to helping him in class, I am working on a project about Hindu goddess traditions and the worship of the goddess in the natural world. I am also studying Hindi as part of my Religious Studies degree and hope to travel to India next winter through a volunteer program that would allow me to do community development work in another part of the world.

In addition to school, I am very passionate about activism and have been involved in the coalition working to STOP the destructive project of I-69! For more info about this economically and environmentally destructive project please visit: http://www.i69tour.org/. I am currently an intern with INPIRG (Indiana Public Interest Research Group) as the No I-69 Campaign Coalition Coordinator. I also volunteer with Indiana Forest Alliance/Heartwood and am an organizer for the Bloomington Circus Collective, a diverse group of artists and activists that create positive forms of social and environmental protest, education, and celebration. All of these groups are involved in the opposition to I-69. We have had a successful fall, drawing close 500 citizens from across Indiana to the steps of the Statehouse in Indianapolis on October 22 for a vibrant and powerful rally. For pictures, click here!. The next step to increasing opposition to this highway is to let the rest of Indiana know that they will be paying for this needless highway through higher gas prices or all construction on other projects will stop for the estimated 14 year duration of the construction of I-69. Why, when we are at the beginning of the end of the supply of cheap oil, is the state’s Department of Transportation using our precious tax dollars to build 1950’s infrastructure? What we need are innovative solutions to our transportation and economic problems, not more highways that tear up more of our natural resources and leave in their wake gas stations, fast food joints, and the pollution caused by superhighways. Say NO to New Terrain I-69! Fix the roads we have and preserve the health of our ecosystems and our communities!

Lastly, I want to thank the Department of Religious Studies for its dedication to providing an environment where education can be about more than earning a degree to graduate and make millions. In my four years at IU, it has been my classes within this department that have broadened my perspective and taught me how to think deeply about humanity’s place in this world. I feel blessed to have found such a supportive and truly caring environment in which to learn, and explore the diversity of human culture.