April 29, 2015 | Erin Bluvas, bluvase@sc.edu 

Graduate students represented multiple departments and programs* across the Arnold School at USC’s 2015 Graduate Student Day. This annual celebration also serves as a competition for oral and poster research presentations as well creative performance/displays and thesis/dissertation speeches. In addition to showcasing student work for the university and larger community, Graduate Student Day includes an awards ceremony.

For the third** year in a row, a doctoral student from the Department of Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior (HPEB) has been awarded the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Leadership. Chiwoneso Tinago, a third year student, took home one of the two Dean’s Awards presented this year. These awards, which include $1,000 honorariums, are given to exceptional graduate students who have demonstrated excellence in leadership on campus, in their academic disciplines or in the community.

At USC, Tinago is actively engaged in mentoring and service as the Graduate Service Mentor for over 200 undergraduate residents in Preston Residential College. She also serves as the advisor for Y-IMPACT (Youth Impacting Minds, People and Communities Together), a student-led community service organization within Preston that has nearly doubled in size under her guidance and is on track to completing 1,500 hours of community service this academic year. Tinago also volunteers as a Service Saturday site leader and has represented HPEB on the Dean’s Student Advisory Council.

Outside the university, she is an American Association of University Women International Fellow, an organization which empowers women through education, research, leadership and advocacy. “I am determined to do my part to aid in this mission and one avenue is through my dissertation research which seeks to empower young women in my home country, Zimbabwe, to actively engage in efforts to improve their health,” she says.

Tinago’s mentors are many and varied, including Arnold School faculty such as her dissertation chair, HPEB Associate ProfessorLucy Annang Ingram. “My mentors have similar characteristics,” she says. “They challenge me to dig deeper and explore innovative ways to address issues, and they dedicate time to nurture my passion for learning and public health.” After graduation, Tinago plans to work for an international health agency, coordinating maternal and child health programs in developing countries and eventually establishing a non-profit maternal and child health agency in Zimbabwe.

*The following Arnold School graduate students presented in the 2015 Graduate Student Day competition. 

Emily Garnett	Communication Sciences and Disorders
Svetlana Malyutina	Communication Sciences and Disorders
Firas Alhasson	Environmental Health Sciences
Varun Chandrashekaran	Environmental Health Sciences
Suvarthi Das	Environmental Health Sciences
Diptadip Dattaroy	Environmental Health Sciences
Eva Preisner	Environmental Health Sciences
Alexander-Jacques Sougiannis	Exercise Science
Keith Brazendale	Exercise Science
Charity Breneman	Exercise Science
C’iana Cooper	Exercise Science
Madison DeMello	Exercise Science
Gillian Harper	Exercise Science
Kimbell Hetzler	Exercise Science
Melissa Kolar	Exercise Science
Rebecca Kyruliuk	Exercise Science
Joyce Middleton	Exercise Science
Ryan Porter	Exercise Science
Kara Whitaker	Exercise Science
Caroline Bergeron	HPEB
Ann Blair Kennedy	HPEB
Lynn Boyd	HPEB
Heather Henderson	HPEB
Ebru Cayir	HPEB
Danielle Gentile	HPEB
Salima Kasymova	HPEB
Chiwoneso Tinago	HPEB
Danielle Schoffman	HPEB
Min Jee Lee	Health Services Policy and Management
Jumee Wang	Health Services Policy and Management
Lashonda Williams	Health Services Policy and Management
David Gallerani	Public Health-General, MPH

**2014 Winner: Ann Blair Kennedy; 2013 Winner: Danielle Schoffman