Joanna B. Global Health '20
Hello again! To reintroduce myself, I'm Joanna Bernatowicz and I'm a junior studying Global and Public Health Sciences in the School of Human Ecology. Last summer, I had the pleasure of working with the allopathic and ayurvedic physicians, counsellors, and patients at the Vivekananda Memorial Hospital to create integrative informational materials for diabetes, pre/post natal care, and diet. This project gave me the opportunity to conduct extensive research, shadow countless hours in the outpatient departments, participate in camps in the field, and speak with many experts on these topics. Ultimately, I left last summer feeling inspired by the discipline of medicine and the mentors I found during my eight weeks abroad. I was heartened by SVYM's encompassing approach to healthcare, especially their commitment to impacting higher stream influences on health and preventative medicine. Since my experience, I have committed myself to premedical studies with a focus on public health with the hope of becoming a primary care physician. In addition, I have since pursued further engagement with SVYM and the development sphere by returning to Mysore to collaborate on a research report on the Prerepana Project as a culmination of my learnings from a sustainable development course I took the previous semester with Dr. Balasubramanium. All in all, I am beyond thrilled to return as a teaching assistant to help support the next cohort of students as they partner with, learn, and grow with SVYM.
Terrill M. ILR '21
Hi! My name is Terrill Malone and I am a sophomore in the ILR School. This past summer, I traveled to India to participate in the ILR School’s Global Service Learning Program in India. During the program, my project in India was teaching math to students with mental and intellectual impairments and disabilities at Sneha Kiran of Mysore Spastic Society, as well as conducting research on Cerebral Palsy. Sneha Kiran of Mysore Spastic Society, a partner of SVYM, is a school that serves a mission to “support, nurture and enable” children with cerebral palsy through offering services of special education, therapy and rehabilitation, family support, and community support and awareness to and for children ages four to 16.
My teachings focused primarily on functional and vocational math to help intellectually impaired students become familiar and comfortable with the use of everyday math concepts, like number identification, basic addition and subtraction, calculator and calendar usage, and monetary concepts. Working beside highly skilled, qualified, and experienced staff, I was tasked with creating baseline examinations, of which I would use to test the students’ prior knowledge, teaching the students during the school day at Sneha Kiran, and re-examining the students at the end of my project to measure their learning growth and outcomes. After working with the students for a few weeks, I found that multi-sensory integration, the use of concrete learning materials, and one-to-one teaching made a difference in the students’ learning outcomes. The students that I worked with, overall, achieved a 30-percent increase in their average score on the post-examination. I used this information to advise the full-time staff and teachers at Sneha Kiran to help them explore different ways to improve student learning.
Since my time in India, my interest in the fields of disability rights, employment law, and intersectionality studies has grown. I returned to the ILR School where I have since taken courses like Disability Studies, Disability in the Workplace, and Labor Law and Employment.
In the ILR School and at Cornell, I am involved with the following organizations: the Minority ILR Student Organization, the ILR Global Affairs Club, the ILR Admissions Ambassadors Team, the Cornell Assemblies, the Cornell Lending Library, the Student Library Advisory Council, the Cornell Coalition on Mental Health, and Black Students United at Cornell.
