Katherine Swartz has a passion for journalism that’s evident in everything she does; she follows her stories no matter the medium and has a strong interest in digital storytelling. Katherine is a second year global studies and film and media studies double major at UC Santa Barbara. She is focused on Middle Eastern politics as well as documentary studies, and she recently began studying Arabic.
Katherine plans to pursue a career in journalism after UCSB. She was drawn to the Gabler Program because she can advance her journalistic writing and multimedia skills through the direction of her mentors. She plans to develop a project centered around mass incarceration in the United States. Katherine is an assistant news editor for the Daily Nexus, the largest news publication at UCSB, and is responsible for assigning and editing pieces for our 50+ writer staff. This summer, she produced an original short documentary, Cannabis Row, which investigates the growth of the cannabis industry since 2016 in the small beach town of Carpinteria. After school, she hopes to work abroad for a publication covering international affairs.
How International College Students Have Been Affected by COVID-19
I researched how international college students have been affected by COVID-19 and the shift to online learning. International students — both in California and in home countries across the world — are having difficulty accessing coursework, being forced to wake up in the middle of the night for class and exams, and are disconnected from their campus community. I interviewed several international students from China and Japan over Zoom and by phone to hear about their experiences. I discovered that while international students are facing unique difficulties during this quarter, their most pressing concern is about fall term and whether they will be able to come back to UCSB in the future due to travel restrictions and visa problems. But through these challenges, the students I spoke to have remained resilient and determined to put their education first, no matter the circumstances.
