Olivia Lauer felt 'completely invigorated to do more' about social, environmental justice

Olivia Lauer was asked to give a presentation for a social justice regional conference during the summer of 2022 and finished the series "feeling completely invigorated to do more."

Lauer, who works in the public health field, was interested in the dialogue regarding Critical Race Theory and social and environmental justice movements.

"I could not believe that organizations and entire professional fields were releasing public-facing social justice strategic plans, and I wanted to get involved," she said. "I was scrolling on Facebook looking for recipes and saw an ad for the Center of Law Justice and Culture. I learned more about the program and knew that it would be the perfect program for me."

Now Lauer is an online graduate student in the M.A. in Law, Justice and Culture program at Ohio University while continuing to work full-time.

"I work for the Ohio Department of Health in the Bureau of Environmental Health and Radiation Protection. I work to connect families that have children with lead poisoning to the appropriate health care and environmental resources. I have been with the agency nearly six years!" Lauer said.

"I plan to use my graduate degree in law, justice and culture to apply toward policy reform," Lauer said. "I also plan to earn a Ph.D. in history to become a public historian. I am interested in slavery in the Americas and want to contribute to preserving oral histories from the past."

"It has been exciting to study law and society while working in public health because I am learning meaningful ways to address disparities and power dynamics that I can apply to my work," Lauer said.

"I will always remember one of my first classes with Dr. Mariana Dantas, Slavery in the Americas. I struggled in the beginning because I was very defensive about the history, and I needed help taking the walls down to let new information in. Dr. Dantas was so kind and patiently taught me how to engage with the materials in class, and those tools helped me in other classes, too," Lauer recalled.

Even though she doesn't come to campus, Lauer has found ways to connect with faculty and students in the Center for Law, Justice and Culture.

She's working as a graduate student mentor for the undergraduate students and attend a bi-weekly series Dr. Kathleen Sullivan that is "designed for us to learn and teach about the formal and informal rules of graduate school. The sessions are opened with Dr. Sullivan providing insight into law and society and how it applies to us, and for me it is a series of 'I got this' moments that I’m grateful to be a part of," Lauer said.

"I do miss not being able to come to the campus to take a class or go to the campus library, but I found ways to virtually connect with campus during the semester which helped to expose me to other events and great people!" she said.

"I look for opportunities to connect with the people that I come into contact with virtually in a personal way. I attend as many virtually events that I can, and I serve as a mentor in a mentorship cohort that provides support to undergraduate students as I navigate through grad school," Lauer said. "It's been over a decade since attending classes on campus so while I do miss the campus life, I find tremendous value in the experience of connection itself."