Natalie Kologrivov
University of Pittsburgh | Oakland
Bio:
Natalie Kologrivov is a rising senior at the University of Pittsburgh. She grew up in a small town in North New Jersey called Wyckoff. She has four sisters and two brothers in addition to her dog, Laila. She is currently in the Master of Athletic Training program at Pitt and will graduate in 2024. She also is pursuing a minor in Sociology to deepen and broaden her understanding of society as a whole. In May of 2022, Natalie studied abroad in Greece for four weeks traveling to Tolo, Olympia, Karpathos, and Athens. She was one of thirteen students in her program, all of which were from the University of Pittsburgh, Oakland. In Greece, she studied Sociology of Sports and Sociology of Tourism. The program focused mostly on tourism, specifically how the economy relies on tourism. She explored different types of dependencies such as the Island of Karpathos. She studied there for about two weeks and realized the economy of the island mostly depended on tourists spending money. While in Karpathos, she traveled to a village on the southern and northern borders, as well as traveled up into the mountains to experience the village up there. Karpathos mostly relies on vacation tourism with some support from sports tourism due to the high winds in August that are good for windsurfing and other water sports. Tolo and Olympia however, mostly relied on tourists who were looking to explore historical sites. She didn’t notice beaches or vast vacation spots but both areas had extensive historical backgrounds and importance. Finally, she learned that Athens relied the least on tourism due to the population but the main contributor to the economic stability that they have now was the 2004 Olympics where the revenue came from tourists and athletics. Overall, for the month that she was there, Natalie explored that while Greece is a strong independent country, it would not be as strong or independent.
CEE Report: “Gender: A Discussion on Identity and Equality”
Our CEE was about gender equality and identity and how those topics pertained to individuals. We met with students from TRIO Student Support Services at the University of Pittsburgh and presented our CEE to them. We began with short introductions of myself and my group members, then we presented definitions of gender identity and gender equality, followed by a privilege walk, and ended with a discussion and debrief at the end. It was a small group of people so when we started with introductions, we also encouraged the audience to introduce themselves. We then went through the definitions and again, encouraged the audience to add what these words meant to them. The introductions and definitions also added some comfortability with the audience and ourselves, the presenters, because we didn’t want to start our privilege walk if the audience didn’t feel comfortable. We then asked everyone to stand and line up in the middle of the room and did some practice questions like, “take a step forward if you prefer dogs over cats.” After doing a few practice questions, we moved onto the real statements. Some of those statements were “take a step forward if you see your gender identity equally represented in politics” or “take a step backwards if you’ve ever felt imposter syndrome in your field of study/major.” After each question, there was space to share their opinions or feelings on the statement that was just said. At the end, we had a debrief and reflection where everyone was able to share what they felt about the presentation. It went really well, and I really think the audience had a good experience with it.