Harvard bound: Marissa Getts

Marissa Getts hopes to make the world better someday through urban planning. To that end, she will study at the Harvard Graduate School of Design beginning this fall.

The 2011 Columbia Falls grad did her undergraduate studies at Brigham Young University in Utah, graduating in 2018 with a 3.43 grade point average. She admits she was worried about getting into Harvard — but she studied hard for her graduate record exams and had a wealth of work experience doing internships.

At BYU she earned a honors degree in sociology and minors in International Development and Middle Eastern Studies. After running BYU’s International Development internship in Malawi, Africa, she spent much of her time at BYU as a teaching assistant in the business school. She also worked on design and communication strategy for Mabira Collective, an ethical jewelry production company based in Uganda. She currently co-advises the Center’s student leadership and the Oxford Map the System Challenge — a program that challenges student to tackle world issues in a creative way.

Getts said she’s looking forward to Harvard,

“It was my first choice,” she said. “I’m fully funded. It’s pretty exciting.”

She’ll complete her first semester online due to concerns about the coronavirus.

She’s said she has concerns about modern cities and planning. Races have become just as segregated as they were decades ago due to wealth inequality.

Growing up in Montana made her concerned about the environment.

“I saw this as a way to combine my two very different passions to make the world a better place,” she said.

For example, Covid-19 has made the demand for green space in cities even greater as people see the advantages of a walking or bicycling community.

But these improvements come at an expense and people don’t like to pay property taxes.

“I don’t have answers yet,” Getts said. “Maybe after the (Harvard) program.”

She currently lives in Provo, Utah, but commutes to Orem for work. She said Provo has done a pretty good job of planning, but Orem is a maze of parking lots.

“It’s not walkable at all,” she said.

Getts is the daughter of Andrew and Mary Ellen Getts.

“She has always been interested in making the world a better place for all people. In junior high she worked to get her fellow students to work on quilts and mittens for people in Pakistan who had suffered a devastating earthquake during the winter. In high school she started a powder puff football game during homecoming week to raise money for various causes,” Mary Ellen Getts said.