A passion for blue ocean and green spaces

Every spring and fall, we profile just a few of our amazing graduates in our convocation handout. We proudly feature these stories here on Dal News. Congrats to all our new graduates!

Dalhousie was “an easy decision” for Kit Moran. As a swimmer and lover of natural sciences, he knew he wanted to be close to the ocean. “You have so many opportunities [here] that you don’t get if you go to a land-locked university.”

Five years and five Atlantic University Sport (AUS) banners later, the Prince George, B.C., native is graduating with a Bachelor of Science with honours in Environmental Science.

“Environmental science, at the core, is really about how people interact with the environment,” he says. He chose to investigate that interaction further and completed an honours thesis on the effect of urban green spaces on the health of city dwellers.

“I’m hoping that using this framework, eventually someone’s going to be able to look at urban parks and green spaces and be able to say with more certainty how the green space actually affects people,” he says. “If we can show that urban green spaces can help, we can design better cities for people.”

In addition to his academic achievements – including being named a CIS Academic All-Canadian every year of his university career – Moran was a dedicated leader in the swim community and captain of the Dalhousie swim team. He spent around 20 hours a week in the pool while at Dal, and countless more hours volunteering as the secretary and swimming rep on the Dalhousie Varsity Council and as a children’s swimming instructor. He was this year’s recipient of the AUS Swimming Student-Athlete Community Service Award.

“The swimming community supports me so much, and I love to give back in any way that I can. I just feel that it’s part of what I owe the 
community,” he says.

Moran plans to return to Dalhousie this fall to take a few more classes while he contemplates his next step.

“I’m enjoying life and the way things are here, so I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing for a little bit longer.”