New postgraduate fellowships from the Keough School’s Kellogg Institute for International Studies are helping University of Notre Dame alumni gain real-world experience in sustainable development.
Holly Rivers, associate director of the Kellogg Institute, said the fellowships help recent graduates gain practical and marketable job skills. Fellowship recipients are working at organizations including Catholic Relief Services, the Migration Policy Institute, and the Wilson Center.
“They’re making professional connections and developing skills that they’ll use throughout their careers,” Rivers said, adding that Kellogg plans to expand the postgraduate fellowship program.
Samdrup Phurbu (also called Sangzhu Pubu), a 2020 graduate of the Keough School of Global Affairs’ Master of Global Affairs program, hopes to start an education initiative in his native Tibet. His fellowship took him to Chengdu, China, where he is working with a regional public health consultancy group to educate the public via social media about prevalent diseases and health issues in Tibet.
“I am gaining experience in policy analysis, identifying and working with relevant stakeholders, communication strategy—all things I can later transfer to my own professional development,” Phurbu said.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, most of the first cohort of postgraduate fellows are working virtually. Among them is Joshua Pine, a former Kellogg International Scholar and a 2020 master of global affairs graduate, who lives in Cincinnati, Ohio. This summer Pine is working as a remote research fellow for the National League of Cities, an advocacy group that serves the interests of 19,000 cities, towns, and villages in the United States. Pine also is partnering with YARD & Company, a Cincinnati-based urban growth firm co-founded by Notre Dame alumnus Joe Nickol. The Kellogg fellowship has enabled Pine to pursue creative problem-solving issues affecting urban communities.
“Working remotely has enabled me to expand my professional engagement with Washington, DC,-based organizations while still living in the Midwest, which I’m incredibly thankful for,” Pine said.
Another former International Scholar, Christian Arega ’20, is using her fellowship to study health policy for the Chicago-based Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights on two projects. One compares the social distributions of disease among the state’s immigrant populations and Black communities, while the second assesses charity care laws in different states with the goal of learning how to best help nonprofit hospitals in Illinois provide care to uninsured patients.
Arega, who will pursue a master of public health degree at Yale University in the fall, said her summer work aligns with her larger interest in global health.
“This position offers a great opportunity for me to better understand what it means to work in health policy and advocacy for health equity,” she said.
To see a full list of postgraduate fellowship recipients and where they are working, click here.
Originally published at kellogg.nd.edu on July 16, 2020.
Top photo: Joshua Pine, a recent master of global affairs graduate, participates in a discussion with partner organizations in the Keough School’s Integration Lab (i-Lab) on February 15, 2019.
