Alumni Board Scholar Profile: Q&A with 2016 Scholar Ethan Greenberg

Boettcher Scholar Year: 2016
Hometown: Denver
College/Degrees: Colorado College – B.A. in Political Science; Minor: Environmental Issues (expected 2020)

What are you currently interested in pursuing after graduating?
An abundance of post-grad options pique my interest, and I am grateful for that. I am strongly considering teacher licensure programs and teaching high school social studies. I am also contemplating policy work either in the education, environmental, or criminal justice fields. I consider law school a long-term possibility, but not immediately after my undergraduate studies. In other words, I have many (perhaps too many) interests but have not decided the exact route I will pursue.

Tell us about what activities, groups and/or organizations you have joined in college and why you joined them.
Every week I co-teach a class in the El Paso County jail through the Colorado College Prison Project, which I became aware of somewhat fortuitously by writing a newspaper article about their work. I have been involved in student government and I will serve as Student Body President for this upcoming academic year. Through a program called JusticeCorps, I work at the El Paso County Combined Courthouse with self-represented civil litigants. Finally, I play on the CC men’s club soccer team as well as intramural soccer teams, and I admit I often take the latter more seriously than the former.

Tell us about an important mentor you have had.
Beyond family, a couple Colorado College Boettcher Scholars who graduated a few years ahead of me have provided invaluable guidance. In many ways, college was my ‘first big decision,’ and when I received the Boettcher Scholarship, it reduced many of the external factors pressing on that decision. These CC Scholars were influential first in my decision to come to CC as a Boettcher Scholar and subsequently how I pursued my time here at CC. It has emphasized the importance of mentors who have recently gone through your experience but are sufficiently removed to have the benefit of hindsight.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
In terms of broad advice, I’m a fanatic of Yogi Berra quotes. A sampling: “Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours; The future ain’t what it used to be; If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be; If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.”

And for the pragmatic: don’t write anything in an email that you wouldn’t want read back to you later in life.

If you could have dinner with one person or a few people from history, who would you choose and why?
A formidable question. It would be a dream to bring together legal minds/Supreme Court justices from distinct eras. Something along the lines of a table with John Jay, John Marshall Harlan, Louis Brandeis, Thurgood Marshall, Sandra Day O’Connor… I would quickly run out of seats. There would be common knowledge of common documents, but vastly different time periods in which each person developed their philosophies. And of course, I would be remiss not to invite the Boettchers to the dinner.