Students Find Home in Public Health
It’s been in the works for more than a decade.
This year, with a powerhouse professor at the helm, an undergraduate degree in public health officially launched its first cohort.
“My job was to make the classes come to life,” says Robin Pickering, professor and chair of the new offering in the School of Health Sciences, “to make the courses line up with the broader vision for the program.”
Pickering spent the past year developing that path. After months of paperwork and meetings, she says it all felt real the minute students walked into class this fall.
“It’s been so invigorating to see how passionate they are,” she says. “I had so many students come up to me and say they wanted to study public health. It’s great to watch that happen in real time.”
The degree tackles innately human issues from the root, which is exactly what seems to have drawn the trailblazing cohort to the new degree.
Maddie Ediger (’25) is an applied math major with a concentration in biochemistry and a minor in sociology. She knows two things about herself – she loves math, science and analyzing data, but she also loves people.
“I knew I liked all these things in different areas, but I didn’t know if there was a home for all of them,” she explains. “And then there were these conversations about public health starting at GU, and that was an ‘aha!’ moment where I realized there is a home for all my skills.”
Ediger, a senior, didn’t change her major but she did enroll in public health classes as soon as she could, taking the opportunity to ingrate into the discipline.
“It’s definitely an affirmation that this is the path I want to be on,” she continues.
Madeleine Smathers (’27) started as a political science major, but as she headed toward sophomore year, something was missing. Just like Ediger, Smathers heard about the incoming public health major and says it “immediately struck a chord.”
Smathers comes from a medical family and public health seemed a natural choice, a tangible link to her values.
“I felt like it really connected me to the problems people are actually facing in our communities,” she continues, saying her parents were both frontline workers during the COVID-19 pandemic and she watched as people around her grew hesitant of vaccines.
It made her want to understand.
Smathers wondered. Questions like those during her formative years in high school would eventually push her toward a major in public health.
It’s a common theme in the new cohort – entering as one major, feeling like something isn’t quite right, then finding a home in public health.
Emma Swenson (‘27) started in engineering management. There were aspects of the degree she liked – the research and business-like practices – but Swenson found as her freshmen year went on, she didn’t like engineering as much as she thought she did.
A quick scroll through Gonzaga’s website revealed an undergraduate degree in public health coming fall 2024.
Now a little more than a month down her newfound path, Swenson, feeling deeply connected to the material, says it’s made her a more active participant in the world’s problems.
“We’re in a time where everything is changing so much,” she explains.
College is a time of great self-exploration. It's entirely common for students to commit to a major, take a class in a different major and fall in love with a completely different discipline. That’s an essential part of discovering one’s path. Gonzaga’s Jesuit ethos encourages a discovery process that helps students match their academic life with their personal calling.
Adding new degrees will continually open doors for students they didn’t even know were there. And as Pickering will tell you, there is no archetype for what a public health student should be.
An online Master of Public Health program is on its way to Gonzaga. The first cohort will start classes in fall 2025.