Student Profile: Drew Emge
Drew Emge’s dream is to use his French minor to improve AIDS care in Africa.
Alma College gave him the opportunity to make that dream a reality.
Drew Emge presents his paper, Uganda, Brazil and HIV/AIDS: Lessons from the Developing Worldat Honors Day on April 5, 2007.
Emge spent three weeks interning in an HIV/AIDS clinic and hospice in Cape Town, South Africa in the summer of 2006, and taught 15 to 17-year-olds about HIV/AIDS in Tanzania during the summer of 2007.
“(In Cape Town) I was mainly an observer in the clinic, but had a more ‘hands-on’ role in the hospice where I fed patients, visited with them and assisted the nurses in taking the patients to the clinic for appointments,” the Bay City junior says. “(In Tanzania) I was a peer-educator responsible for not only teaching the different lessons about the virus and disease, but for answering questions and facilitating discussions and other activities as well.”
Emge created a Program of Emphasis in International Health, and with his French minor hopes to become a physician and public health official for the World Health Organization (WHO), the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) or another body that works to protect and promote public health on a global scale.
His French minor allows him to speak with most of the people he is helping, as English and French are the two most widely spoken languages in Africa.
“I know that every lecture and assignment will help me move closer to an open mind about anyone and anything that I come in contact with while abroad or even at home.”
“I know that every lecture and assignment will help me move closer to an open mind about anyone and anything that I come in contact with while abroad or even at home,” he says. “I also know that what I learn in French class, I will actually be using in the future.”
The relationships with professors, the award-winning programs and the small, intimate size brought Emge to Alma.
He participates in the Model United Nations Team, is the president of Alpha Phi Omega (a service fraternity), a resident assistant, co-founder and Health Division coordinator of the United Health Professionals of Alma College, 2009 class vice president, Wilcox Medical Center student assistant and volunteers in the Rehabilitation Department at the Masonic Home.
