Introducing the 2017 Resilience Team

By Cayla Whiteside

A little background information about each of this year’s members.

Manali McCarthy:

Manali is double majoring in Anthropology and Environmental Studies/Geography. She is a SAR returner and hopes to make an even greater impact in the UCLA community with this year’s project. She is passionate about raising sustainability awareness through little acts, such as encouraging her friends to stop using single-use plastics like straws or water bottles. She can’t wait to crank it up a notch (or several!) by working with her team to make the stormwater capture system a reality.

Cayla Whiteside:

Cayla is a third year civil and environmental engineering major with a minor in environmental systems and society. Cayla plans to work in the field of water resources engineering and sustainability in water management after graduation. She believes that every person can have a positive impact the environment, even with the smallest of actions. She is extremely excited to build something long-lasting and tangible (like a stormwater capture system) on the UCLA campus.

Kathleen Knight:

Kathleen “Kat” Knight is a third year environmental science major, with concentrations in both environmental systems and society and conservation biology. She was a part of the Resilience Team last year and is excited to be working on the water cistern project again. She was abroad last quarter in Costa Rica doing research on jaguars, and is excited to continue environmental research through SAR. Kat is passionate about the conservation of natural ecosystems and resources, and hopes to further influence UCLA’s commitment to sustainability and the environment this year.

Lily Wherry:

Lily is a third year undergraduate student studying environmental science. Outside of school and SAR, she is a Resident Assistant at Hitch Suites and a neurology research at Cedars Sinai. Her hobbies include ballet, hiking, running, painting, and playing the guitar.

Ricardo Patlan:

Ricardo is a third year political science major with a double minor in geography/environmental studies and regional urban planning. This is his first year as a member of SAR and he looks forward to learning and growing from this experience, while capitalising on the opportunity to make a lasting, sustainable impact on UCLA’s campus. He hopes to one day apply his experience with SAR to a career in environmental policy, analysis, or law.

Our story started Week 1 with the all SAR class meeting on Thursday. This is where we were first able to meet our teammates and our stakeholder, Nurit Katz. Our project is unique in that it is a continuation of last year’s Resilience Team and their project of implementing a stormwater capture system. We are so excited to pick a site for the system and get the ball rolling on its implementation.

The very next day, we met again with Nurit and Bonnie Bentzin and Austin Park for a debriefing of last year’s project and where they left off. We learned a lot of valuable information, such as the ability to capture condensate from air conditioning in order to make our capture system viable year round.

Then, this Tuesday, we met as a team for the first time! Kat was able to fill us in on some more background information about the project and answer any questions we had. We discussed which direction we wanted to pursue and what our priorities were these first few weeks. At the top of the list: start our TGIF application to get as much funding as possible!

We hope to meet with Nurit again next week to discuss more in depth her interests and desires for this year’s Resilience Team.

Until next week!