In their first year at Cornell, Ariel Schulsinger ’24, Maggie Shideler ’24 and Gabi Steinberg ’24 were placed in a group as part of Intro to Public Health, a required course for all Global and Public Health Sciences (GPHS) majors. They worked together to design an intervention for obesity ؅— a dance program for middle-school girls in the Bronx — and presented it at a virtual symposium. Fast forward four years, and the same GPHS trio wound up randomly grouped together again in their senior capstone course.

“It definitely feels like coming full circle,” said Shideler. “I couldn’t think of a better bookend to my GPHS experience than working together again.”

This time, the group chose to address food insecurity among undergraduate students at Cornell. They’re proposing interventions targeting social and economic elements and designing a theory of change model to explain how the interventions will lead to the desired outcome.

“We chose this topic because we wanted to study an issue close to home that really impacts people in our social circles on campus,” said Shideler.

Shideler is one of more than 100 students who presented their capstone projects and engaged learning experiences aimed at improving public health everywhere from Ithaca to India as part of the 2023 Global and Public Health Experiential Learning Symposium, held Nov. 10 in the Physical Sciences Building. 

The annual event is hosted by the Division of Nutritional Sciences (DNS) and the Global Health Student Advisory Board, which is comprised of GPHS majors and students with a minor in Global Health. The symposium showcases the work of undergraduates including students who are GPHS majors or minoring in Global Health. The students are required to complete an experiential learning opportunity (ELO); ELOs are diverse experiences that may include work with a resource-limited population in the U.S. or abroad. The experience is designed to provide students an opportunity to apply what they’ve learned in the classroom to a field setting. Often, the ELO challenges students to deepen their understanding of the health problems that disproportionately affect underserved communities.

“Experiential learning is at the core of this major, as a curricular requirement,” said Patricia Cassano, director of DNS. “These experiences give students a chance to take what they’re learning in the classroom and play out some of the concepts in a real-world setting.”

Before students engage in experiential learning, they take a course to learn about ethics, professional and interpersonal skills, and how to cultivate an open-minded and reflexive mindset. As part of the capstone class, they reflect on the experience and how it fits with their academics and their future career path.

At this year’s symposium, students shared their experiences addressing urgent issues facing communities locally and globally: from studying high mercury in our waterways, to examining nutrition indicators in Ethiopia, to running community opioid clinics. Some students stayed stateside with programs like Cornell in Washington and the Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) Summer Internship, which connects students with projects in New York state communities.

Even closer to home, some students spent this past summer creating guides on finding affordable housing in Tompkins County.

“I think the experiential learning opportunity allowed me to explore urgent issues that are surrounding me through a new perspective and lens,” said Aimee Bostwick ’24, whose worked in a group in this semester’s senior capstone course to investigate opioid abuse and harm reduction among Puerto Rican men aged 45-55 in the South Bronx.

“When I’m chatting with all of you about the ELO process and your experiences, what I keep hearing is that these engaged learning opportunities really give you a sense of meaning and purpose that motivates you and helps you contextualize the work you’re doing here at Cornell,” said Deena Thomas, lecturer and post-doctoral associate in DNS. “The scope and impact of the work you’re doing can be felt all over the world… I’m struck by how much you all are changing communities. You really are.”

“At Cornell, global public health is really all about community,” said Rahul Verma ’24, co-president of the Global Public Health Student Advisory Board. “If there’s one thing that unites all the people that are presenting today, it’s that we all have a deep passion for community-based public health work.”