Markle Keeps Fellow Students Involved and Informed

Kai Markle '27 in red and gray shirt talking with another student across a table. There is a yellow side describing voting registration deadlines. — Kai Markle '27, a student ambassador for the Pacific Votes program, talks with another student while tabling for the program in the University Center. On this day, Markle was providing information on registering for upcoming primary elections. Photo by Thomas Lal.

Kai Markle ’27 believes that the best citizen is an engaged citizen.

At least once a month, you can find Markle passing that message on to his fellow 51�� students in his role as the student ambassador for the Pacific Votes program in the university’s McCall Center for Civic Engagement.

At a recent event in the University Center, Markle was hard at work helping classmates register to vote and directing them to voter resources in the states where they live in advance of May’s primary elections. Those short conversations, he believes, are a productive first step to get his fellow students more involved in the democratic process.

“It’s not people being unwilling to engage; it’s that there are these small barriers that stop them from being engaged,” said Markle, a double major in politics and government and philosophy. “With how busy everyone is with college life, that can be the difference between someone voting or not voting.

“It really takes one small 10- to 15-minute interaction,” he adds, “and that has been the coolest part of the job.”

Markle’s work to get out the vote has earned national recognition. In April, Markle was among 168 students named to the . The program recognizes students who demonstrate exceptional dedication to creating a more civically engaged culture within their campus communities.

“Getting recognition from one of our national partners is unbelievable,” Markle said. “It’s been truly one of the greatest honors I have had in college, to be able to further that nonpartisan work, trying to get every student involved civically.”

Morgan Knapp, program manager of applied and experiential learning for the McCall Center, nominated Markle for the award. She said that his creativity, enthusiasm, and approachability have allowed the Pacific Votes program to flourish.

“Kai was one of the first two Pacific Votes student ambassadors our center hired, and his work has set an incredibly high bar,” Knapp said. “He has embraced the non-partisan nature of this work and is committed to helping all eligible Boxers vote in each election. I particularly appreciate that Kai has built a reputation as a trusted resource on campus – exactly what our students need in a voting ambassador.”

Civics and community engagement were instilled in Markle at a young age, watching his mother volunteer for food banks and foster care organizations in the Portland area. That passion took off during his senior year at Grant High School, participating on the school’s team for “,” a national competition conducted by the Center for Civic Education, where students compete in simulated congressional hearings.

Those experiences reinforced that being part of a community means giving back to it, which is something that Markle sees daily.

“51�� offers a super strong community of people who want to make that difference,” he said. “Everyone I talk to on campus, whether they’re going into physical therapy or computer science or biology, I see this common thread that they are all doing it because they love helping other people.”

“I think the abundance of social capital that’s available at Pacific — because it’s such a small, tight-knit campus that’s committed to making everyone the best version of themselves — has been the greatest tool for achieving my goals.”

— Kai Markle '27

Two men running in blue shirts, one has a dog on a leash running alongside. — Running alongside Associate Professor of Biology Jon Schnorr, Kai Markle, right in Phi Delta Theta shirt, participates in the Students for Environmental Awareness Earth Day 5K on April 25, 2026. Photo by Thomas Lal.

Like many Pacific students, Markle is involved in many activities outside of the classroom. In addition to Pacific Votes, he is a resident assistant in Walter Hall. He is a member of the Philosophy Club and the Criminal Justice Club. He helped start the Jewish Student Union and the Pacific Student Political Society. For two years, he competed as a member of the Boxer wrestling program.

He is also the founding president of the Oregon Zeta chapter of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, the first nationally-affiliated fraternity at the university in decades. Markle never expected to get involved in Greek life in college and even admits to having held an “Animal House” vision of fraternities. However, the more he learned and became involved, the more he found that Phi Delta Theta’s core values of friendship, sound learning and moral rectitude matched his personal values.

Between his academics and extracurriculars, Markle doesn’t have a lot of unstructured time, but he wouldn’t want it any other way.

“I just love doing it,” he said. “I do a lot of things, and I’m involved, but it doesn’t feel like I am constantly overworked or tired. A lot of times, I’m just doing these things with my best friends.

“I think the abundance of social capital that’s available at Pacific — because it’s such a small, tight-knit campus that’s committed to making everyone the best version of themselves — has been the greatest tool for achieving my goals.”

Knapp believes that commitment to endeavors both inside and outside of the classroom helps make Markle and other Pacific students better prepared for life after graduation.

“Pacific helps students launch lives of purpose. A lot of really important learning takes place in the classroom, but in my experience, co-curriculars and civic engagement can be particularly impactful as students work to understand what they care about and how they want to show up in the world,” Knapp said. “These opportunities not only help students build work-ready skills that employers are looking for, but ‘fill their cup’ while they are here, and help build self-confidence and self-efficacy as they prepare to move into the real world.”

As he enters his senior year, Markle is looking forward to seeing how Pacific Votes can engage more students to take part in November’s general election. He wants to continue to educate and engage, and convince his fellow students that their vote truly matters. Getting more people to care, more people out to vote, is what he believes can be an antidote to today’s highly-charged political climate.

“I can understand why people feel discouraged, and I think that it can feel like you are adding to that division if you are playing sides. But I think the opposite is true,” Markle said. “The more people get involved, the more voices and the more votes we have, the more diverse the range of viewpoints gets. If we want to change polarization, that starts with us getting involved.”

Following graduation from Pacific, Markle plans to take a gap year before going to law school to study constitutional law. And while he won’t say never to using his passion for civics to run for elected office, he sees himself enjoying more of the legal and educational side of things, especially after his experiences with the McCall Center.

It is where he has seen the ability to truly make a difference.

“We live in this world of social media, there’s so much information there, but having that interpersonal relationship with someone, a person there to help you through the process, I think that has the biggest impact,” Markle said. “Talking with someone in the UC, having an event where students are hanging out and talking, is the way that we can make the most impact.”