The Oregon Legislature’s 2025 legislative session is underway, and Sravya Tadepalli and her team are preparing by reviewing bills and hearing from advocacy groups. It’s a lot of work, but she is near the room where it happens.

“Every time I go into the Oregon Capitol building with all the bustling, I feel like this is democracy in action,” Tadepalli says. “People are trying to do things to make the state a better place.”

Years before Tadepalli started working as a senior legislative advisor at the Oregon Employment Department, she was a Clark Honors College student studying political science and journalism. As a UO student, she received some of the highest honors for an undergrad, including being a Truman Scholar and Rhodes Scholar finalist. After the UO, Tadepalli went to graduate school at Harvard University to earn a master’s degree in public policy.

Growing up in Oregon, Tadepalli always thought she’d go to the University of Oregon, being the state’s top liberal arts school. She arrived planning to study journalism, but after taking a few political science courses, she discovered that there could be some careers related to politics and public policy.

“When I entered the UO, I realized there were all these other jobs that I didn’t know existed,” she says. “I really liked politics and wanted to study it and political issues.”

During her first year, Tadepalli took courses that would give her a better understanding of the political world, such as Modern World Governments, Introduction to International Relations and Southeast Asian Politics.

“Southeast Asian Politics gave me this deeper interest in democracy and what it takes to fight authoritarianism,” Tadepalli says. “I’ve studied India in the historical context, but Modern World Governments was the first time I had studied it more in a modern political policy context.”

As part of the Wayne Morse Scholars Program, Tadepalli heard from people working with advocacy groups focused on action and legislation, and she saw her peers working on political campaigns. These opened her eyes to what someone with a political science degree can do.

Her work as a political science major came together as she became involved with the group Hindus for Human Rights, which works to fight Hindu nationalism and caste discrimination. The group advocates to the US government about how these issues are impacting people living in India and North America.

As an undergrad with a resume that included experiential learning and on-campus activity, as well as high grades, Tadepalli was a prime candidate for recognition for prestigious awards like the Truman Scholarship and Rhodes Scholarship. But she says she wouldn’t have sent in her application had it not been for a faculty member. And that’s why she says students should take initiative to seek out and go for academic opportunities.

“If something catches your eye and you're interested in it, just try to go for it, because you never know what's going to happen,” she says.

– By Henry Houston, College of Arts and Sciences