Erik Katovich is an Economics major at the University of Minnesota, class of 2015. His future plans are yet to be written, but he wants to pursue something related to understanding and aiding humanitarian aid and poverty reduction. Erik works part time in a soybean molecular genetics lab at his university, and he plays saxophone in both jazz and classical styles.

Erik’s other great love is the written word, both reading and writing. “My thoughts are stretched and transformed by history’s great authors and thinkers. These men and women are my greatest inspiration,” says Erik. In his field of study, economics, many people abhor writing creatively, but Erik loves struggling to get his thoughts down on paper, attempting and failing, and finally seeing his accomplishment in ink on a page. Erik believes he can have the most meaningful impact on peoples’ lives through economics, but he will always write. “Economics can lift people from poverty, but poetry and literature add something real and beautiful to the defense of why we should be proud of being human.”