Featured Testimonial About Creighton University
I’m learning through every step, every immersion, every interaction, every partnership I make. These partnerships and connections are ones I'm going to hold on to for the rest of my career.
By Micah Mertes
Rockib Uddin, class of 2028, was drawn to public health for a deeply personal reason. When he was in middle school, his grandfather died of dysentery after drinking water from a contaminated well in Bangladesh.
“I didn’t understand why he didn’t have clean water,” Uddin says. “That experience made me very focused on the global water crisis during high school and college, which broadened my perspective about public health and the impact it can have on a community and society.”
At first, Uddin wasn’t interested in medicine but in community work. But over time, he began to see the profound impact he could have as a physician, improving a community's overall health through active relationships with individual patients.
While applying to medical schools, he learned about the School of Medicine’s Arrupe Global Scholars and Partnerships Program.
“I was like, ‘Wait, this is exactly the type of program I want to pursue, one that allows me to earn a medical degree and a Master of Public Health, where the programs are fully integrated.’”
Arrupe scholars like Uddin complete a five-year program that includes extended, repeat immersions to one of four partner sites. Uddin chose Kathmandu University in Nepal, where he works alongside providers, patients and the larger community. He is also working with the university’s hospital on access to clean water.
“I’m learning through every step, every immersion, every interaction, every partnership I make. These partnerships and connections are ones I'm going to hold on to for the rest of my career.”
Uddin says he is learning through action. “Creighton’s Jesuit education puts meaning into everything we do and every experience we have. What we do and what we learn is for the sake of others, not ourselves. I always reflect on that as I try to become the physician and health practitioner I hope to be.”
Arrupe Global Scholars and Partnerships Program
In 2021, an anonymous foundation made a $25 million gift to establish the Arrupe Global Scholars and Partnerships Program at Creighton. Since then, multiple cohorts of medical students have traveled to sites throughout the world to work alongside community partners and healthcare providers. Through the five-year dual MD-MPH program, students learn through Ignatian formation to stand with marginalized communities during five immersions across partner sites in the Dominican Republic, Rwanda, Ecuador and Nepal.
Learn more about the program here.
See a video of program participants.
