Two College of Science and Health graduate students have become the latest recipients of the distinguished Schweitzer fellowship, which supports aspiring health and human services professionals. Jesse Gamoran (Clinical and Community Psychology, PhD) and Roberto Mizhquiri (Masters of Entry in Nursing) join the 2024-2025 cohort of fellows.
Founded in 1996, the program provides students across healthcare disciplines the opportunity to implement innovative, year-long projects that improve health outcomes for underserved Chicago communities. These community-based service projects, rooted in research and evidence-based practice, have touched more than 150 local sites and countless residents in the past three decades.
Gamoran, whose research interests include access to mental healthcare, group therapy, and interventions for people experiencing homelessness, will be facilitating a support group program for residents and staff at
The Boulevard. As a medical respite shelter, The Boulevard provides a variety of services to clients, from medical care and housing to workforce development. Gamoran will develop, implement, and evaluate support groups that seek to enhance sense of community for residents and staff, as well as reduce experiences of burnout for staff.
The fellowship directly supports Gamoran's long-term goals. “I aspire to serve as a psychologist in a teaching hospital, community healthcare center, or governmental program that develops and implements psychological interventions for historically marginalized populations. Working at The Boulevard has been a great way for me to get outside the classroom in a service-oriented capacity and has provided me with meaningful experience supporting an underserved community," Gamoran explains.
Mizhquiri will be partnering with the
Peace Exchange to facilitate an educational project focused on violence prevention in Chicago's South Side. The Peace Exchange educates youth about avoiding and resolving conflict through social/emotional learning and non-violent communication, hosting several immersive programs for students in collaboration with Chicago Public Schools.
Mizhquiri's project will target violence prevention through activities that promote mental wellness. He is currently providing workshops to adolescents (grades 5-8) at the Holy Family Ministries School in the Lawndale area.“The overall goal is to see if participation in health workshops focused on mental and physical well-being lead to a measurable improvement in knowledge, attitude, and behavior when comparing pre- and post-evaluations," Mizhquiri says.
The project will assess changes in stress response, and track how frequently participants use the well-being techniques learned following the workshop. Mizhquiri also plans on extending the workshops to newly arrived immigrants facing a variety of health challenges by liaising with community partners.
“The latter is in collaboration with the Mobile Migrant Health Team (MMHT), a group of UIC medical students that are doing outstanding work providing primary and urgent care to these newly arrived immigrants," Mizhquiri explains.
Gamoran and Mizhquiri join multiple College of Science and Health students who have received the esteemed fellowship in recent years. You can learn more about the Chicago chapter of the Schweitzer Fellowship and its annual recipients, including other recent DePaul fellows, here. You can also support the 2024-2025 fellows and their projects directly
by visiting the Schweitzer Fellowship Group’s fundraising
page.