It’s not just the first hint of fall foliage—the University of Maryland campus is glowing a definite red this week with crimson lights from Memorial Chapel to Samuel Riggs IV Alumni Center.

Homecoming 2024 festivities kicked off Sunday night with SEE’s Homecoming Comedy Show, featuring Emmy award-winning comedian John Mulaney, and now, there’s tons of new ways to show off your Maryland pride leading up to the big game.

Among the fun and games at Boris' Block Party - the close to this year's School of Public Health Welcome Week - we caught up with some SPH undergraduates to hear why they chose to study public health and what they hope to do and be in the future! Many of our undergraduates are keenly aware of inequities within our public health systems and plan to use what they learn here at UMD to improve the lives of people in communities outside of their classrooms.

On Thursday, student organizations, academic programs and other School of Public Health involvement groups gathered for the school’s annual SPH Involvement Fair, held in the School on its ground floor Concourse.

Welcome back Public Health Terps! To gather the SPH community together in marking the new semester, the school will be hosting its third annual Welcome Week filled with fun activities, experiences and opportunities to connect with the SPH family. 

Third-year family science doctoral student Pond Ezra was awarded the 2024 National Council on Family Relations (NCFR) Student Award last month for their work aiming to increase the representation of transgender people in family science in general, in particular in the realm of parenting.

Expanded on-campus services for substance use treatment, a wellness ambassadors group for graduate students and peer-led workshops in living-learning communities are among the new initiatives at the University of Maryland this fall to support mental health.

2024 Fall semester is off to a great start with new graduate students gathering for orientation, connecting across diverse specialties and backgrounds, hearing from inspiring faculty, getting involved in a lively resource fair and, of course, enjoying ice cream! 

Tia Cunningham is passionate about supporting students in all the ways – how they connect, how they belong and how they grow beyond UMD into meaningful careers.

Minoring in humanities, health and medicine behavioral and community health graduate Temitope Akinbiola is working to become a nurse practitioner. She will begin her masters for nursing in the fall at Johns Hopkins University.

No stranger to academic rigor, Biglin is a 2024 Philip Merrill Presidential Scholar, student ambassador, Global Public Health Scholar and BS-MPH enrollee in the health policy analysis and evaluation concentration. She has interned across the field of public health in the U.S.