Discovering A Passion

The summer months at Baylor are far from quiet. These precious three months between the end of one academic year in the spring and the start of a new one in the fall are full of excitement and activity as students explore their passions and goals. 

When class is dismissed for the last time in May, students eagerly apply themselves to pursuits that amplify their academic studies. After all, Baylor’s college education is not contained in just the classroom. A Baylor education involves learning in ways that reveal new passions, investing in students’ interests and competencies and expanding the limits of what students thought they could do and where they would go.

Ria Shani, B.B.A. ’24, graduated in May with a double major in management and Baylor Business Fellows with a minor in biology, and her experiences with Baylor are launching her into healthcare on a global scale. 

In the months between her freshman and sophomore years, she participated in the Tropical Medicine Summer Institute offered in coordination between Baylor University and Baylor College of Medicine’s National School of Tropical Medicine. The program, available only to Baylor students, introduces participants to the field of tropical medicine and the diseases — caused by temperature, socioeconomic status and education, among other factors — that disproportionately afflict the world’s population affected by poverty.

“I knew going into college that I had an interest in biology, so this was a way to catapult that interest,” Shani said of investing her time in summer to the program.

The program includes lectures from faculty of diverse disciplines. Participants learn about global health from varied perspectives, including epidemiology, dermatology and veterinary studies, and they complete a group project on a global health topic. Shani’s group took on a project on maternal mortality in Chad, Africa, and presented their project to the National School of Tropical Medicine.

“If you were to do it now,” Shani explained, “you would actually go to Baylor College of Medicine campus in Houston and do everything in person, including hands-on experiments, a tour of the lab and the ability to do the group projects in person.”

Shani admits that her experience with the institute as a rising sophomore during the COVID pandemic was not typical, as distance learning measures were in place due to COVID. 

“It was eye-opening that I participated during COVID because the work that they do is global health-related. The National School of Tropical Medicine was working on creating a COVID vaccine — it was something that they were working on and that we were living. I got to understand the importance of studying tropical medicine, infectious disease and global health because we were living the COVID-19 pandemic and had seen first-hand the implications of all of it.”

The following summer between her sophomore and junior year, Shani participated in the Tropical Disease Research Internship Program, which serves as a continuation of the Tropical Medicine Summer Institute. Students who continue to the internship program work in the same lab that they toured during the summer institute to further develop their interests through research.

One particular speaker during the internship emphasized the global scope of healthcare — global health broadly seeks to improve the health of and achieve health equity for all people worldwide. 

Shani said her experience in the summer institute and research internship “instilled for me why I want to go into medicine in the first place.”

Shani graduated in May, and she plans to go to medical school and pursue her passion for making a global impact in healthcare. She is even considering working in the field of infectious diseases. 

“Both programs allowed me to see people that I admire and that I respect doing work that I would like to do, doing life-changing work, transforming work. It gave me motivation to continue my pre-med journey. I think it was one of the most inspiring things I’ve done.”