MEET A SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENT
Olivia Yalden ’23 • Toms River, NJ
Public health major with the Honors College
Swanson ICAT Endowed Scholarship
Amazing opportunities await if you are willing to put yourself out there: That’s what Olivia Yalden has discovered during her time at the College.
“There are so many amazing professors who will go above and beyond for you by pushing you to take advantage of opportunities like research, leadership positions and study abroad: the biggest challenge will be allowing yourself to believe you are capable of taking advantage of these opportunities,” says the public health major in the Honors College.
Yalden has appreciated the individualized attention and experiential learning opportunities she’s had at CofC. The Swanson ICAT Endowed Scholarship recipient particularly enjoyed the Entrepreneurship Living Learning Community, where her hands-on experiences included serving as E-LLC student director. Yalden also participated in hydration research that was published and held leadership positions for mentoring cohorts.
During her junior year, Yalden worked as a behavior health and health policy intern at the research company Westat. “It was a great way to gain advanced technical skills and gain exposure to how a successful public health corporation operates and collaborates with other agencies and organizations,” she says.
Yalden attributes her achievements to her professors and peers. “The faculty at CofC truly take an interest in their students and care about their personal and academic success,” she explains. “The community and family-like structure of the College has helped me to be the most successful version of myself.”
In the fall, Yalden will attend George Washington University’s Milken Institute School of Public Health in Washington, D.C.
“I am getting my Master of Public Health with a biostatistics concentration because I am passionate about working in infectious disease control,” says Yalden. “With biostatistics, I hope to learn quantitative methods to study the spread of infectious diseases that plague our communities and contribute to efforts that control the spread of viruses like COVID-19, Ebola and Zika.”