Dear Class of 1999,
Thank you for funding the most valuable learning experience of my life. My fellowship to Uganda broadened my perspectives on service and global citizenship, synthesized my interests and studies, and realized my desire to engage personally and apply my untested passions and knowledge.
Your Tucker Fellowship ended up being the ideal way for me to experience global understanding and leadership, and I was able to put into practice the motto of the Tucker Foundation and the College in living service and spirituality while experiencing global citizenship and cross-cultural understanding. You see, before going to Uganda I had understood what it meant to study development and public health, but as I found out, there is quite a gap between studies and understanding, with practice and experience filling in that vital space that makes the difference between being a student and agent for change.
Whilst in Uganda I filled that space with so many rich experiences, making both classroom and cocurricular experiences prior and since much deeper and more meaningful. For example, this term I am taking a development economics course where my experience in Uganda has helped inform my studies on every section of the syllabus from land use and labor economics to health and the nutrition-based poverty trap. Outside of the classroom, I've been inspired to talk with the administration about more synthetic learning opportunities like the fellowships program and have begun to work with some peers on advancing global learning through various campus institutions.
In placing the fellowship into my Dartmouth experience, I can, with ease, mark it as one of my favorite quarters. The Tucker fellowship was the pinnacle of a very international year for me, where I studied economics and health or worked in health and community development on three continents and in four different locations throughout the year. At the University of Copenhagen, I took classes in and on the advanced welfare state, a system where the human right of health is extended to everyone to some degree. While back in Hanover for winter term, I took a medical anthropology class and Allen Koop's course on the history of the American medical system, a course that illustrated the historical idiosyncrasies of the world's greatest have-and have-not system.
In any other year (and trust me that it wouldn't be hyperbole if I said lifetime) either of those two terms would have been the best learning experiences on the topic of health and health policy that I could have imagined. But thanks to you, my journey into understanding health and human rights, geographic privilege, and the great challenges that our world faces vis-a-vis health care was about to take its most interesting turn, a turn that directed me to rural Uganda.
During my fellowship I was able to really gain a deeper understanding of development and health in the context of a marginalized community. I had been privileged to have some experiences in the Dominican Republic through Tucker's Alternative Spring Break program, but because of the length of the fellowship I was better able to explore my own motivations and beliefs about service and work and more deeply connect with my peers and mentors on a professional and familial level-strengthening my own beliefs as a self-identifying spiritual humanist. While on the ground I was able to explore various levels of the health system and I was exposed to the expertise and opinions of many people from various perspectives. While I began to build a relationship with the community and acclimate myself to my surroundings I helped out at the local government health clinic. There I would weigh babies and help record test results as a part of the daily maternal care clinics, basically learning about Uganda's governmental health programs while serving the clinic in any manner that they needed.
After a couple of weeks of working at the clinic and making new friends and contacts, I began running health seminars in some local high schools, working with the headmasters to put together a good curriculum for HIV/AIDS and hygiene seminars. Some of my favorite memories from my fellowship came from the end of each day at the schools after my sessions ended, when a dialogue between the classes and myself would start, a truly cross-cultural conversation between the young people of very different backgrounds. The students and I would discuss geopolitics, religion, President Obama and Museveni, and the great Premier League soccer stars. I learned so much about Uganda, and was really able to reflect on my own identity as both an American and human. My last project in Uganda was a fortuitous one. Luckily, my organization was playing host to a Peace Corps member who was working to build village health teams (VHTs). He opened up to me and allowed me to work as a partner on the project, meaning that I helped travel to dozens of villages in the sub-county to speak with village elders to recruit the best and brightest community members for training. Every two weeks we held a week long training with education modules, demonstrations, and exams to train a whole new level of localized health responders. I got to work with young American doctors and Ugandan community health workers as a presenter and peer, and I really felt empowered as a partner and servant to the community. While working with the Peace Corps and his partners, I really felt what being a global agent for change felt like, and that sense of service and value is something that was particularly special in Uganda.
All of these projects summed to the best experience I could have imagined. And while there were lows to accompany the highs, I can only sit on campus and reflect positively on my time in Uganda. It gave relevance to my studies and activities, and as a senior has given me very valuable direction for my future. Largely due to the fellowship you sponsored, I know that I am aiming for medical school, ultimately to serve an under-served community in both practice and policy. I want to embed myself, whether domestically or abroad, into a community and advocate for health rights. I'm so glad I've had this experience to make my studies in economics and geography relevant to development and social medicine, and the connection that I feel to issues of inequality have invigorated me to continue on what I had hoped my passions would be. And for that, I have to thank you all for your generosity. Without my Tucker Fellowship I would have missed out on so much, and I hope to pay it forward in a big way through my work some day.