Personal Stories, Passion, & Creativity: 2025 Student Gallery Opening

In a grand kick off to the new semester, the Global Health Education and Learning Incubator (GHELI) welcomed a group of Harvard College students into our space to celebrate their projects being inducted into the Incubator’s Global Health Student Gallery.

The gallery features a collection of outstanding student work that echoes GHELI’s guiding principles: to support teaching and learning about global health through creative and multimodal approaches. This year’s iteration of the gallery features new additions from faculty director Sue J. Goldie’s Spring 2024 course, GenEd 1063 World Health: Challenges and Opportunities. For their final assignment, students were asked to systematically analyze a societal health challenge of their choice and create a “problem-inspired” product intended to influence policy, motivate action, and inspire real-world change. Projects encompassed a wide range of topics and mediums, from a video PSA warning against drunk driving in the Dominican Republic, to a set of fliers and infographics to educate about antimicrobial resistance in India, to a podcast evaluating environmental justice initiatives in Massachusetts.

Students who came to the event were first treated to a gallery tour, where they were able to share their projects with GHELI staff and one another. GHELI intern Aimee Ramirez, who has been working with the Incubator since her own project was inducted into the gallery in 2022, acted as a facilitator and guide. As part of her guiding questions, she asked students, “What inspired you to make this project?” Students had many interesting reflections to share, including personal stories and experiences that influenced how they approached their chosen topic or population. The students were then able to spend time with Professor Goldie and teaching fellows from the class, discussing current challenges and shifting directions in the field of global health.

When they were not perusing the gallery or engaging in lively conversation, students were brought into the studio, where they participated in short interviews about their creative process and experience in the course. Several students expressed how the project gave them the opportunity to dive deeper into a topic they had personal connections with. Some mentioned how the project challenged them to think about issues through the lens of different stakeholders. One student discussed how attending GHELI-hosted student workshops provided helpful guidance as they set off making their project. Overall, the students all shared how honored they felt to be included in the gallery along with such impassioned and creative classmates.

With the conclusion of a successful event, we are excited to see where the passion and creativity of our students takes them, in the new semester and in the years to come. To explore new projects added to the gallery, as well as projects from years past, check out our online gallery available on our website.