Catching Up With Citizen-Scholar Winner Leta Stock

By Emily Compton

Leta in Bend, Oregon, on an Adventure Outings trip through Chico State University.
Leta in Bend, Oregon, on an Adventure Outings trip through Chico State University.

PSREC Citizen-Scholar winner Leta Stock has already made the most of her time after graduating high school. In just a year and a half, she has traveled to new states and countries.

Leta, a 2018 graduate of Quincy High School, attends Chico State University, where she is studying recreation, hospitality, and parks management with an event management emphasis, and minoring in Spanish.

She has already begun to put her Spanish coursework to use, spending three weeks during winter break traveling in Guatemala. She stayed with a host family, attended class five days a week and explored the city on the weekends while improving her Spanish.

Chico State University’s Adventure Outings program interested Leta right away. She is now an assistant leader for the program, leading trips around California for activities such as rock climbing and white water rafting.
The program offers students a variety of activities. They manage equipment rentals, the university climbing gym, bicycle repair shop and a wilderness orientation program for incoming students.

As an assistant leader, Leta helps plan and facilitate outings. While on a recent white water rafting trip, Leta participated in pre-trip meetings, organized rafts and helped get camp organized when the group arrived at their drop-in spot. Her work didn’t stop there. Leta guided a raft for participants, and helped pack up and resolve any problems that came up while on the river.

Leta in front of a church in Xela, Guatamala.
Leta in front of a church in Xela, Guatamala.

It was no surprise that this program interested Leta. For her senior project at Quincy High School, Leta organized and taught a four-week clinic to students on how to rock climb. She holds certificates in both rock wall climbing and raft guiding from Feather River College.

Leta said Adventure Outings has been her biggest success thus far during her time at Chico State.

“Adventure Outings gave me an entire group of amazing people to call friends, as well as a chance to improve my leadership skills and technical skills in adventure sports.”

After college, Leta hopes to create events that people look forward to.

Applications for the 2020 Citizen Scholar Scholarships are available online at www.psrec.coop, at PSREC’s office in Portola or by calling the PSREC Member Services Department at (530)832-4261 or (800)555-2207.