December 1, 2025 | Twin Cities, Minnesota
On December 1, 2025, I received an email that I had been hoping for: I was selected as one of 17 high school students nationwide for the Spring 2026 U.S.–China Co-Lab on Climate Solutions, offered by the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE). I was thrilled. After spending weeks on the application, seeing that acceptance felt like a dream come true.
The application itself pushed me to reflect much more deeply on why environmental issues matter to me. I wrote about my experiences working on environmental research and engaging with environmental challenges in my own community, while also thinking about how those experiences had shaped the way I viewed larger issues around the world. Writing the essays took a lot of time, partly because I wanted them to genuinely reflect what I cared about rather than simply list what I had done.
Through my environmental research and community work, I had also begun to realize that environmental problems are rarely contained within the boundaries of one city, state, or country. Climate change especially requires people with very different experiences and perspectives to learn from one another. That was what made the Co-Lab particularly exciting to me.
From February 27 through May 22, 2026, the 12-week program would bring high school students from the United States and China together as co-learners to explore climate issues, U.S.–China cooperation, and possibilities for local, bilateral, and global climate action. (SPICE) We would have opportunities to hear from scholars and experts, discuss complicated environmental challenges, and collaborate directly with peers whose communities and perspectives could be very different from my own.
I knew I would enter the program with plenty to learn. That was exactly what excited me. I hoped that conversations with experts and international peers would challenge some of my assumptions, broaden the way I thought about climate solutions, and help me understand how ideas developed in one community might connect with challenges thousands of miles away.
When I submitted my application weeks earlier, I had no idea where it would lead. On December 1, finding out that I would actually be part of the Co-Lab made all of those hours of writing and reflection worth it. More importantly, it gave me an opportunity to take something I already cared deeply about, environmental action, and begin looking at it through a much wider lens.