Zach Manta

Alumni Update:

Zach recently wrapped up an accelerated masters degree through the University of Chicago MAPSS program, during which he focused on cultural, moral, and evolutionary psychology and wrote a thesis reviewing psychological frameworks on global variation in nepotism. He is currently training for a two year teaching residency at a charter school in Chicago called the Great Lakes Academy. He will be teaching middle school sciences while taking coursework through the Relay School of Graduate Education, hoping to receive his teaching certification and MA in teaching within two years.

Fellow Bio:

Zach is a recent graduate of the University of Southern California where he completed his degree in Environmental Studies with a minor in Psychology in May of 2017. His time at USC was spent directing the Environmental Core student advocacy group as it worked to green USC’s campus, leading meditations as a Mindful USC Student Leader, and coordinating adventures with USC students and professors via Peaks & Professors. Zach is always hungry for interesting perspectives on complex and urgent social issues and got a glimpse of the many questions surrounding development in Africa while studying abroad at the University of Cape Town in 2016. He has combined his studies in the environment and psychology through a research position in the interdisciplinary field of conservation psychology, and believes there’s good reason to think that our ability to handle the global problems of the 21st century will start with the way we relate to our local communities. Zach is excited to fill a role in the Kasiisi Project’s conservation education programs and can’t wait to have everything he thinks he knows turned upside-down.