CGH Senior seminar

Every year, students in the Community and Global Health Senior Seminar at Macalester host a poster session where they display the results of their independent research or civic engagement projects. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the move to online instruction, it's not possible to showcase student projects in the traditional way. Instead, we are sharing our projects in this web-based format.

This year we had an impressive group of 25 graduating seniors with a concentration in CGH, who together demonstrate the breadth and diversity of work in public health and community-centered healthcare.

Many of our students capitalized on Macalester's location in the vibrant Twin Cities metro area for their projects. Some did research internships at local hospitals and medical centers, including research on access to lung cancer screening at Hennepin Healthcare Research Institute (Molly Adams), emergency care at Hennepin County Medical Center (Kami Drenkova), studies on pain management at Gillette Children's Hospital (Ana Thompson), and physical therapy at Tria Orthopedics (Caitlyn Burmester). Others found enriching opportunities with some of our most frequent local partner organizations, such as the Minnesota Department of Health (Anjali Mani and Ben Townsend), Family Tree Clinic (Paige Hepenstal), Fairview Hospice (Kata Hahn), and Fraser (Emma Wellman). Others worked locally at non-profits like United States of Care (Quinn Rafferty) and public health communications firms like Arundel Metrics (Sofia Pozsonyiova), both based here in St. Paul.

Meanwhile, some CGH concentrators worked on summer internships at other US sites, including the Marjorie Kovler Center in Chicago (Aditi Dalela), the Prevention Institute in Oakland, California (Dani Bowen-Gerstein), Journey Mental Health in Madison, Wisconsin (Elizabeth Everitt), and the Kupugani Multicultural Camp, outside of Chicago (Leah Hailu). At least one internship experience, at the Alzheimer's Association in Portland, Oregon (Nhu Nguyen) was funded by Macalester's Winter Mann-Hill Fellowship.

Several students participated in advanced research and internship projects connected to their study away experiences, all over the world, including Jordan (Ikran Sheikh-Mursal), Denmark (Kaitlyn Campbell), Senegal (Mathea Pielemeier), Spain (Annika Jorgensen), South Africa (Maggie Wick) and Tucson, Arizona (Malia Becker).

Another group of students engaged in advanced academic research projects, under the auspices of the Future Public Health Leaders Program at the University of Michigan (Iridiana Magaña), the Global Mental Health Program at Columbia University (Sasha Mochida), and collaborative student-faculty research at Macalester (Laurel Kriesel-Bigler).

Collectively, we'd like to express our gratitude to all the community partner organizations, study away programs, faculty sponsors and advisors, fellow students, friends, and family who have been supportive of our work in CGH. We would also like to extend a special thank you to four Macalester campus programs that have been so important in connecting students with these opportunities: the Olin-Rice Hub, Career Exploration, The Center for Study Away, and the Civic Engagement Center. Prospective CGH concentrators should look to these programs for help in finding internship and research opportunities.

Best wishes for a healthy future, for all of us.

Sincerely,

Eric D. Carter, Director, Community and Global Health Concentration

Associate Professor, Geography Department, Macalester College