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.

The last test for the Class of 2024, or maybe our first, came as the lights went out, hundreds of  soon-to-be graduates in full regalia in a briefly dark XFinity Center, fanning one another with the yellow index cards that were our pass to walk the stage after so much hard work. But the long-awaited moment to, as Dean Lushniak puts it, ‘begin again’ was postponed.

First-generation community health graduate Heydy Herbert BS ’24 has always been a passionate advocate for issues close to her heart. As a student who was undocumented until two years ago, Herbert — an anti-Black racism and disability studies double minor — understands the importance of helping out.

Sidiki Keita ’23 has always had a passion for physical activity. An avid athlete, his love for sports such as wrestling and track led him to pursue a degree in kinesiology. This spring, Keita was awarded the Whitlark Endowed Scholarship for his strong academics, potential for leadership in public health and commitment to integrating physical activity and public health. He plans on becoming a physician assistant (PA) and will apply to PA school.