Student Highlights
Student interest in Global Health Studies has continued to grow year after year, particularly since 2017 when the adjunct major began. From 2017 to 2024, the number of majors and minors has grown by 56%, from 289 students in 2017 to 452 by the end of the 2023-24 academic year. Including this year’s graduating class, GHS now has over 1300 alumni!
There are several student accomplishments to highlight this year.
Third year GHS student Shae Murphy won the prestigious Obama-Chesky Voyager Scholarship, supporting her last two years at Northwestern and funding her summer research project investigating women’s healthcare in other countries in order to identify ways to improve women’s health outcomes in the United States.
GHS 2024 alumna Mirabella Johnson won the Alumnae of Northwestern University Graduate Fellowship to support her as she embarks on the Accelerated Public Health Program at the Feinberg School of Medicine, aspiring to work on gun safety, violence 
prevention, and community-based health policy.
Esther Ubadigbo was named as GHS’s student marshal, acknowledging her tremendous accomplishments in GHS, including her independent study project on birth traditions among Black mothers and the role of Black birth workers.
10 GHS students were inducted into Phi Beta Kappa due to their outstanding academic and community engagements at Northwestern.
Other students received several awards, internships, or research grants including:
- The Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst Research Internship in Science and Engineering
- The Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship through the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs
- The Bruins-In-Genomics Undergraduate Research Summer Program hosted at UCLA
- The Cultivating Health and Aging Researchers by Integrating Science, Medicine and Aging Fellowship (CHARISMA) at the University of Chicago
- The James H. Dunn, Jr. Memorial Fellowship providing hands-on experience in Illinois state government
- The National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates
- Public Policy Leadership Conference at Harvard University
- The San Francisco Fellows Program to prepare Fellows for leadership in public service
- The American Chemical Society Scholars Program