Putting Ideals into Action Now

At Wheaton College, graduating senior Aaron Bos-Lun (U.S., UWCUSA) has been a force to be reckoned with. “He is unfailing in his confidence, and seeks out controversy as if it were his best friend,” Alfredo Varela, dean of the college’s Center for Global Education, recently wrote about Aaron. “In order to change the world you have to think big. His smile is big, his dreams are big, and his ambition is huge.”

Even though the list of Aaron’s on-campus involvements is long—founder of the Service Engagement and Activism branch of student government; co-founder of the Davis/United World College House, where UWC graduates live with other students who share their interests in diversity and social action; coordinator of the annual Wheaton College/United World College retreat, which brings together UWC graduates from around the Northeast—his off-campus adventures are at least as impressive.

Between UWC-USA and Wheaton, Aaron was a member of City Year, an AmeriCorps inner-city service and leadership program through which he worked with urban third graders in Washington, D.C. He traveled to South Africa, during his first and third college summers, to do HIV-AIDS prevention work and community outreach in the townships around Capetown for the Amy Biehl Foundation Trust, which honors an American woman killed while working against apartheid. And he spent his senior fall semester in Bhutan, the tiny Himalayan nation that is moving from a monarchy to democracy, researching an honors thesis about that transition and volunteering as a primary school teacher.

All this, Aaron said, “absolutely grows out of the UWC experience. I saw what young people brought together could do, how the world could change.” He came to college determined to put his UWC ideals into action. “From day one, I was thinking very concretely about how I could make a difference in this community.

“I see the UWC mission as something that does not begin until you graduate and you apply it,” said Aaron, who hopes to combine a career in politics and education.“Aaron is the real deal,” Dean Varela declared. “At Wheaton, he has created change.”