Meet your arts senator: Sophia Lesser Thorngren
Sophia Lesser Thorngren has always been passionate about the arts, whether she’s contributing to activities or supporting the community.
Born in Ohio, Sophia spent her life bouncing between there and Colorado. Never staying anywhere longer than five years, Sophia eventually moved to the Philippines. She spent another year in America before finishing up her high school career in Australia.
Some of her interests include rock climbing, acting, singing and getting involved in any type of performance hobby. Sophia has decided to leave her future open-ended, choosing the umbrella degree of General Arts Bachelor. It will allow her to reach numerous areas and do what she loves.
“I’m planning on either doing the entrepreneur minor or the leadership minor. Eventually in the future, I’ve considered [starting my own business], but it’s more so I can get the experience.”
She chose to run for art senator when her husband, Drew Thorngren, ran for business senator and Sophia realized that the path to making a change was not so complicated. It turns out, anyone can make a change in their community.
“Last year, when I was a freshman, I remember hearing about his position but I didn’t know much about it. I knew that I wanted to run for something like that and I thought it’d be super cool.” Sophia wanted to get more involved in USU, including working on the transparency of the art department. She got over her fear factor and decided to try fixing things around the school.
“The position of the art senator is a really great way to get involved and spearhead some of those things that need to be addressed.”
Some of the things that Sophia wants to focus on are transparency and student access to information — she’d never heard that there was an art council in her first semester and she wants the council to be more recognizable and approachable.
She also wants to improve the access to resources, as she feels that art students don’t have enough time to get to know each other during class because of their time-consuming projects.
“I wanted to find ways to help people get to know each other, build connections, networking with each other—be able to bounce ideas. So I wanted to help on merging the gap between students.”
Sophia has been working on creating events and projects that will improve students’ emotional health. As art senator, Sophia wishes to help art students, who are often put under a lot of pressure, to learn to express their emotions through workshops and other activities with others. She wishes to take students’ weaknesses and turn them into strengths.
“I know that mental health has been a big issue that has been worked on this past year, and I know that they’ve done a lot to help with students in that way. But something that’s been important for me is the emotional health of each other.”
Throughout her school life, she worked in student organizations, so she knows how to run and plan events dealing with multiple individuals and faculty. By joining a sorority, she has had recent experience helping out with their organizations by planning events, organizing their books, and working with multiple members to accomplish goals.
Sophia also works as a member of the Student Alumni Association on campus and has been working to build her understanding of diverse groups of people. She aspires to be not only representative of the school but of the student population.
“I really love the campus itself. It was like junior year of high school and I immediately fell in love with it—it’s really that fact that everyone here, even if you don’t know what you want to do, there is something for you. There are opportunities everywhere for us to get involved.”
In her experience, being the new kid in new places and situations, traveling the world, she was forced to put herself out there. She doesn’t want anybody to feel excluded.
“I think something that students should know about me is that I am really big on making sure that everybody is seen and heard.”
Sophia Lesser Thorngren is a student-oriented senator that has chosen to participate in student politics because she cares about students, their involvement in events, and improving emotional health.
With the help and support from other senators and faculty members that have inspired her passion within the arts, Sophia will drive her passion into her work to create a better environment for students from all walks of life.
Megan Cowdell is a freshman opinion columnist studying for a bachelor’s in Communications. She loves music, reading and wants to write books for a living.
megan.cowdell@usu.edu