Ishaan Swami ’26: Club Leader, Geology Researcher & World Traveler

Ishaan Swami ’26 is a Geology+French combined major from Tustin, California. At Whitman College, Ishaan was deeply connected to people and place through research experiences, campus communities and study abroad. After graduation, he’ll continue meaningful research as a 2026 recipient of Whitman’s Bassett Traveling Fellowship.

Ishaan’s Whitman Highlights:

• Co-Founder and Co-President of the Dracula Club 
• Treasurer of the Geo and Environmental Scientists of Color Club 
• Published creative writing in the Whitman Outdoor Journal

As a club leader on campus, Ishaan created a community centered around all things vampire-related, like mystery movie nights and vampire hunting. He also served as Treasurer of the Geo and Environmental Scientists of Color Club, helping organize guest speakers and student trips focused on belonging in the sciences.

While studying abroad in Chile, he designed bilingual educational panels for local ranches highlighting the geology, paleontology and archaeology of the region. His work still supports tourism, conservation and public understanding of the landscape to this day.

In his final semester, Ishaan completed an independent study on the Kerguelen Islands, a French territory near Antarctica, where he mapped glacier retreat between 1970 and 2023. The project culminated in a research presentation delivered entirely in French at the Whitman Undergraduate Conference.

One of his favorite Whitman experiences was the Land, Water, Justice field course, where he traveled throughout the Pacific Northwest learning about racial and environmental justice alongside community partners.

What’s next? Ishaan was awarded the 2026 Bassett Traveling Fellowship, which will support his independent ethnogeology research project in Mongolia to work with the World Union of Indigenous Spiritual Practitioners to develop a digital atlas of sacred places in western Mongolia.