First-generation graduate student Lisa Pham is motivated to pursue graduate school based on her family’s love of food and the connections that can come from sharing a meal.

Traci Thompson is a master’s degree student in public administration who has built community by networking with other graduate students outside of her discipline.

Lauren Caton is a Ph.D. student who said she considers building a community a critical part of her academic education and time at UNC-Chapel Hill.

Jeonghwan Kim is a Ph.D. student from Korea studying Latin American literature. He calls getting into his Ph.D. program as one of the happiest days of his life.

Sally Cabrera is a MPH student in the Gillings School of Global Public Health who is focused on community-based research to influence public health policy. With a lens of epidemiological methods, she seeks to enhance the relevance and use of research data that would influence policy and benefit communities.

Melissa Lam-McCarthy is a Master of Public Health student who is focused on health outcomes by way of food justice, supply chains, and access to food for people who live in both urban and rural communities.

Stefani Baca-Atlas is an interprofessional researcher who studies structural and historical risk factors that facilitate transgenerational trauma, and relationships between migration, victimization and exploitation, and mental, physical, and behavioral health outcomes. The Graduate School featured her volunteerism at Carolina in … Read more

Margarett McBride is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience. Her research focuses on how neighborhood contexts shape parenting and youth well-being in Black families. The Graduate School featured her research in its spring 2021 Beyond These Walls event.

Kaeli Welsh, originally from Minneapolis, is a second-year doctoral student in pharmacology. She received her bachelor’s degree in biology and chemistry with honors from St. Olaf College before joining the Biological and Biomedical Sciences Program (BBSP) at UNC-Chapel Hill. She … Read more

Thanh Phan is a third-year doctoral student in biochemistry and biophysics. She is an international student from Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and received her bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Kalamazoo College. Currently, under the guidance of Dr. Brian Kuhlman, … Read more