EXPERIENCES OF A LIFETIME

So much of life, if we are lucky, adheres to the rituals of routine. Occasionally, life-altering moments occur. Such events are often expected: the birth of a child, the loss of a loved one, a marriage, a major vacation, receiving a major promotion or award. 

But then sometimes something good comes along that you never anticipated, and it changes everything. The student experiences highlighted here find students in unexpected and exciting situations that have made a definitive professional and personal difference in their lives. Whether co-authoring a book with a public health legend, measuring environmental exposures and traveling the globe with a major airline, or rubbing shoulders with climate activists at a United Nations conference, these students’ routes at Rollins took impressionable turns. 

These stories of influence and impact epitomize the experience of Rollins students. Their experiences shape, inspire, and define. They are experiences of a lifetime. 

It started with an exciting but straightforward request. Public health luminary William Foege, MD, was preparing to write his latest book on the history of global health and wanted a few Rollins students to help with the research. Did Kara Robinson, EdD, senior associate dean of enrollment management and student affairs, or her staff have any recommendations? 

It was a unique opportunity for sure. But the work description itself was not outside the ordinary. Students tend to be great at assisting with research and taking on a supporting role for major projects — though usually not for someone who has served as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, received a Presidential Medal of Freedom, or led global efforts to eradicate smallpox. 

Joanne Williams 18PH, director of student engagement, provided a handful of suggestions based on students’ application essays. 

“We received this email that was kind of vague that was along the lines of, ‘We have this opportunity for you. Come to this meeting to learn more.’ And then we learned it was to work with Dr. Foege to conduct research for a book he wanted to write,” recalls Alison Hoover 21PH. 

Ultimately, five students were selected: Kiera Chan 23PH, Deborah Chen 21PH, Paul Elish 21PH, Hoover, and Madison Lee 21PH. The students, along with Williams, met with Foege in person to kick off the project. Foege asked thoughtful questions about the students and their interests and kept notes on his yellow legal pad.

“He asked us about ourselves for at least half the meeting,” says Hoover. “Finally, we started talking about his vision and what he wanted to do with the book.” 

Foege had printed out a list of chapters to be written, and by end of the meeting, the students had all selected at least a starting chapter to research. That meeting was in February 2020. By March, the world had gone dark and very quickly, the project meetings took on a different tone and importance in the collaborators’ lives. 

As anxiety, depression, dread, and doom fell over much of the world, the five students, Foege, and Williams found connection over Zoom as they shared their research notes and experiences as COVID-19 unfolded. 

“In some respects, it was comforting to interact with Dr. Foege during the pandemic because he’s a public health hero, but he’s also a really great person who is down to earth, wise, and funny,” says Elish. “He has a great sense of humor and that was often evident in certain meetings we had with him.” 

As students watched public health officials manage the pandemic, Foege encouraged the students to keep journals to record what was happening globally and in their own lives — something he has done for much of his life. He also kept their meetings as settings for connection, where they could discuss the book as well as their worries and concerns about the pandemic and how it was being handled.

“We had lengthy discussions as decisions were made during the pandemic,” says Chan. “It was important that we looked back at history while in the midst of this public health crisis so that we wouldn't make the same mistakes again. That's why this book was so crucial. It was also crucial because Dr. Foege wanted it to be one of his last marks on the literary/academic/global health world. That's why he chose us, so that young minds would carry on his vision and his legacy.” 

Foege’s intention for writing the book was to pull together an approachable history of global public health — what it was, what it is, and where it’s going — with personal anecdotes and reflections woven throughout.  “He had big dreams for a book like this, something that anyone could read,” says Chan. 

Students researched various topics associated with the history of global public health, including the stories behind a few of the nation’s public health schools, the role of pharmacology in global health, colonialism, the military, and more. In time, as the students combed through Emory’s libraries and followed research leads from Foege and each other, they became subject matter experts in their own right. Even if they personally didn’t recognize it yet, Foege did. 

About a year into the project, Foege made an unexpected announcement during one of their Zoom meetings. “He told us, ‘At this point, you guys are really the experts on the area. Why don’t you just write the chapter?,’” recalls Hoover. “There were proverbial crickets in the room!”

“One of the biggest impacts of this experience has been proximity to Dr. Foege during the pandemic. I cannot believe our luck that we met him and started working with him in February 2020 and had such a calm, steady voice and perspective on the pandemic as we lived it.  

“Just to hear certainty, confidence, and understanding from him was incredible. He invited us to be our best selves, to take care of one another, and to find patience and grace in what was such an era of high tension and conflict. To hear from such a visionary with such regularity, I think, will always be my favorite experience of this project.”— Alison Hoover, 21PH

The students thus became co-authors with Foege, taking on the role of lead author for one or more chapters. 

“He was always very welcoming, very engaging, and honestly a great leader,” says Chen. “Working with him was such a delight. I always looked forward to our meetings.”  

Those feelings turned out to be mutual. “It was a positive, but humbling experience,” says Foege. “After more than 60 years working in global health, I knew I still had much to learn, but five Rollins students taught me that I knew even less than I thought I did. Guided and supported by Joanne Williams, they would unearth things that should have been so obvious to me earlier. The opportunity to keep learning was clearly a benefit to an aging author.”

Time passed and the students shared drafts back and forth with each other, Williams, their editors, Anne D. Mather and Tom Paulson, and Foege. In the meantime, the COVID media/Twitter circus unfolded daily, vaccines were released, and the students graduated. They moved to different cities, got jobs, and lived their lives. All the while, they kept working on the book. 

The book was submitted to Johns Hopkins University Press by Mather after extensive honing, tweaking, reworking, and rewriting. Now, it’s a waiting game to see whether they are officially done, or if additional edits remain. 

For now, the alumni authors are doing what they have done throughout: working, waiting, and reflecting on what a surreal time the past few years have been. 

“For many of us, the idea of writing a book at some point is something you entertain,” says Hoover. “I thought it would come about when I had something to say. To start as a master’s student when you’re still learning about public health was jarring at first. But one of the amazing things about working with Dr. Foege is the incredible trust and belief he has in you. He is a giant in the global health world and will be remembered that way forever. To have someone like him look at students and say, ‘You are the experts, go ahead and write it,’ is a terrifying and incredible gift.”

Every year, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) brings dignitaries, ambassadors, policymakers, researchers, and journalists together on a global stage. Emory students, including a handful from Rollins, also take part in the Subsidiary Bodies (SB) sessions — the summer meeting that sets the agenda for that year’s climate talks — and the larger late fall event, the Conference of the Parties (COP). These students attend not just as observers but also as active participants in major conferences that set the world agenda for tackling climate change. 

“Seeing is believing, I think,” says Eri Saikawa, PhD, director of Emory Climate Talks. “To be able to meet with people who are passionate about solving climate issues is important along with realizing their task is very hard and very global. That’s the main reason I want to take the students: so they can understand the reality of what it involves to work on climate together.” 

Saikawa has helped send student delegations to COP since 2015, the year Emory first sent student observers, and played an active role in growing the opportunity for them. Now the experience is part of Emory Climate Talks, a university-wide initiative that sends students to COP and SB each year. Students are selected after submitting their applications, interviewing with members of Emory Climate Talks’ faculty advisory board, and completing Saikawa’s  Emory College class on Climate Change and Society.

“This program was on my radar before I even applied to Rollins,” admits Margaret Olawoyin 23PH. “I was very intentional about applying to be a delegate when I started as a student.” 

Olawoyin ended up attending COP 27 in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, in November 2022. Not only was it her introduction to COP, it also was her first international travel experience. Though the travel time was lengthy and exhausting, it did afford her the opportunity to visit the Great Pyramids and ride camels in Cairo. 

“I would definitely say it was one for the books, and it was really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” says Olawoyin. “I know Emory is one of the few schools in the nation that gives students the opportunity to travel to the UNFCCC conference. Just being a student who was selected among many applicants and one of nine students able to go that year was amazing.” 

Olawoyin’s COP experience proved eventful from day one at the conference. A member of the Youth Sustainable Development Network, Olawoyin was eager to connect with the organization’s CEO, Damilola Balogun, who was in attendance from Lagos, Nigeria. He invited her to attend a dinner where she met Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte, along with climate envoy of the Netherlands Prince Jaime de Bourbon de Parme. Later, she met Robert Bullard, PhD, credited as the father of environmental justice, and Michael Regan, administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 

Olawoyin also had a front-row seat to demonstrations and protests during the conference, one of which occurred during a speech by U.S. President Joe Biden. 

“To see the news on CNN after I got home about an event that occurred where I was in the room was unreal,” she says. 

The peaceful protests tended to repeat the same messages: things are moving too slowly, rich countries should be contributing more, poorer countries need more help to clean up problems they didn’t create.

“The politics of getting information through and getting goals and agreements to be settled is very complex,” recalls Sophia Lamb 23PH, who attended SB 58 in Bonn, Germany, in July 2023. 

“Within the U.N. framework, every single country has to agree for something to go through,” she adds. “It’s hard to get things done on a grand scale. It pushed me away from wanting to work in politics. I appreciate the global perspective, but I realized I want to work more at a local level.  I feel I can have more of an impact at a local or state level than globally.” 

Whether attending the massive COP or the smaller SB meeting, either conference can feel overwhelming. The agenda includes main events and meetings, side events, press conferences, and networking opportunities attended by representatives from all over the world. Through it all, students have official “observer” status which puts them in the room when major discussions convene, and decisions are made. 

At COP 27, Olawoyin was part of the Emory student delegation that gave a talk during a side event on youth climate engagement around the world. Near the end of the talk, she plugged an event she had helped organize at Emory — the 2023 Youth Sustainable Development Conference to promote international youth collaborations. 

While at SB 58, Lamb connected with student delegates from around the world through her seat on two different research and nongovernmental organization constituencies.

“There were a number of key discussions happening throughout the conference, like the Global Stocktake, which refers to taking stock of how well countries have done in meeting their Paris Agreement goals, and loss and damages,” says Lamb. “Country delegates discuss their viewpoints — it’s really a back-and-forth between countries. As an observer, I could sit in the room and hear what the different countries and constituencies had to say.” 

Lamb hopped among side events and press conferences and ultimately spent most of her time at meetings related to activism, loss and damages, and indigenous populations. 

Both Lamb and Olawoyin carried their experiences back with them to the United States. Olawoyin integrated her time at COP into her capstone project and captured her experiences on Emory Climate Talks’ “Amplifire” podcast. Lamb, who attended SB two months after graduating from Rollins, traveled globally after leaving Bonn.  She trekked to Argentina, Alaska, and other places before beginning her job search. 

Attending the conferences definitely altered both students’ career paths. While both still aspire to address climate change, they are narrowing their focus on specific areas of environmental health in locations where they can make the greatest impact. Lamb hopes to work at the local or state level; Olawoyin is looking at jobs in clean energy. 

“COP changed my perspective so much on the environment, on the planet, and how I could make actionable change,” says Olawoyin. “I realized the best area for me is clean energy because it’s a growing field. If I want to make an impact on low-income, disproportionately affected, and under-represented populations, it’s in clean energy.” 

Samantha Hilsee 21C 22PH, an environmental health and safety engineer with Delta Flight Products, began her industrial hygiene internship with Delta in February 2020. Like many Rollins interns before her, she saw an opportunity to learn how industrial hygiene is integrated into Delta operations and partake in free flight privileges anywhere in the world — a Delta employee benefit that interns also enjoy. A month later, as global travel waned because of the pandemic, Hilsee’s role shifted toward COVID-19 response. 

“It was such a fascinating time to not only be a student studying public health, but to also be interning in the airline industry when travel and connection came to a halt,” says Hilsee. “My manager was also a Rollins graduate, so he knew the skills I was able to bring to the table as a student. I was called on early during my internship to help by using what I was learning in the classroom and being a connector to other researchers at Emory during the pandemic.” 

During the early days of COVID, much of Hilsee’s work involved evaluating air ventilation in Delta’s workspaces and planes and the brand’s international disinfection procedures. 

“At the time, the Environmental Protection Agency was identifying and approving chemicals that were effective against COVID-19 for disinfection, but there wasn’t a global standard for what that looked like,” says Josh Smith 07PH, manager of environmental health and industrial hygiene for Delta and Hilsee’s supervisor during her two-year internship. “Other countries couldn’t get the chemicals that the EPA had approved for use, so we had to evaluate what they had and decide, ‘Is this sufficient, is this going to work, will this be good for cleaning our airplanes?’” 

For instance, Hilsee evaluated cleaning chemicals that Tel Aviv experts reported as effective for disinfecting planes to determine if the EPA would agree and to confirm Delta’s comfort level in using them as a disinfectant. 

As scientific advances made it possible for travel to safely continue, the remainder of Hilsee’s internship in 2021-2022 evolved to incorporate more traditional industrial hygiene work, such as measuring heat, sound, and chemical exposures for Delta employees across various departments. Hilsee worked closely with the aircraft maintenance group to conduct different tests to ensure adherence to recommended exposure evaluations to make sure they didn’t exceed any of the recommended exposures set by the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, gather data in the field, meet with employees to listen to their concerns, choose the best sampling strategies, and craft messages on findings and mitigation plans. 

“Time and time again, I worked with employees in the flight division, cargo division, and facilities division,” says Hilsee. “Delta always stressed employee safety regardless of the group or the cost. It was definitely cool to have such a front-facing role in helping a company.”  

Hilsee’s work had a direct impact on the global brand, which wasn’t surprising for Smith, who got his own start at Delta 17 years ago when he was a Rollins student intern. 

“Working with these student interns is mutually beneficial,” says Smith. “It’s great for Delta because we get fresh perspectives constantly coming through. I see it as a long-term interview, where I’m having someone come in, they’re learning the job, they’re really excited about it, and they’re getting all the perks of working with Delta. At the end of their internships, many have proven themselves and end up rolling into either a contractor or full-time position. Right now, five of my former interns are still working for Delta in various roles, including two fellow managers. ”

Interns aren’t relegated to grunt duties or coffee runs. They are out doing the work. They’re wearing safety vests and safety glasses, conducting real-time monitoring. They’re collecting air and water samples, boarding aircraft and doing air-quality monitoring and collecting real-time exposure data. They’re on the tarmac, doing wet bulb globe temperature evaluations or noise studies or in Delta’s maintenance facilities evaluating chemical exposures. They also cross-train with other divisions, attend stand-up briefings, and work on projects involving travel around the country. 

During the first month or two, Smith exposes new interns to all aspects of industrial hygiene at Delta so they can find an area of interest. From there, he encourages them to do projects that pique their interest as the focus of their internship, in addition to other industrial hygiene work that needs to get done. The focal project tends to fulfill graduate academic requirements too — like those needed for an applied practice experience or capstone — and often leads to long-term changes in company policy.

During Smith’s internship, he developed the company’s hexavalent chromium (the chemical that Erin Brockovich made famous) compliance program — which also served as the subject of his capstone and is still in place at Delta today. 

Smith’s internship quickly evolved into a deep passion. After nearly two decades working for the airline carrier, he is still grateful for the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that has allowed him to impact people’s lives and travel the world.

“I want the people who are working at Delta to have healthy and fulfilling careers,” he says. “But, more importantly, I don’t want someone to retire from Delta and not be able to retire comfortably because of something they were exposed to at work.” 

That concern surfaced recently when a chance encounter reminded him of an incident that occurred 17 years ago when he was a Rollins student. 

“One day, early in my internship, I was walking through a maintenance facility and there was this X-ray room and I said, ‘What is this?’ The mechanic in the area explained it was where they X-ray aircraft parts to look for any cracks or anything weakening the part.” 

Smith was concerned by a large lead door in the room and dust on the floor outside. Concerned that the mechanic was being exposed to lead dust and tracking it around with him — potentially to his car or his home. Smith sampled the dust outside the door and on the worker’s shoes and confirmed it was lead. Delta proceeded to invest the money to fix the door, solve the problem, and create what is now a state-of-the-art space.

Recently, Smith was dropping his daughter off at a Delta-sponsored aviation camp in Florida—she dreams of becoming a pilot—and he saw the mechanic from years ago dropping off his own daughter. 

“As we left, I couldn’t stop thinking, ‘There was the girl I was worried about 17 years ago when she would have been an infant.’ To see her grown up and dropped off at the same camp as our daughter and she’s smart and healthy and I know she wasn’t exposed to something her dad unknowingly could have brought home from work, that feels like a win. I’ve thought about that a lot since then. This was the kid I was worried about. We corrected that issue and I know what we’re doing makes a difference.”

Story by Kelly Jordan
Designed by Linda Dobson
Illustration by Kyle Ellingson