Mearieta is a first year graduate student in the BA/MA European Union studies program offered by the university. She recently graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with a Bachelors in Anthropology, Global Studies, and Spanish. She is also a part of the FLAS Fellowship and is excited to start her studies in Italian this year. She is interested in endangered languages, cultures, education, ecology, policy, and globalization.