20 Year Old To Earn Master’s Degree From Columbia University

May 14, 2015 - PRLog -- Marne Garretson, age 20, to earn Masters of Public Health Degree from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York, New York, on May 20, 2015.  She was awarded a STEM Presidential Management Fellowship and plans to continue her family legacy of a career in public service.  Her mother works as an educator serving urban youth.  Her late grandmother spent over 40 years serving urban youth as a School Administrator and Teacher.  Despite grieving the loss of her grandmother, she recently finalized the submission of her master’s thesis entitled Temporal Trends in M(X)DR-Tuberculosis Patients Co-Infected with HIV from 1997-2009: findings from a district-level specialist referral center in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Ms. Garretson’s concentration is Infectious Disease Epidemiology.  While at Mailman, she tutored other graduate students in Epidemiology.  She also tutored high school students in Baltimore, Maryland.  While attending graduate school, Ms. Garretson worked as a Graduate Student Supervisor in Student Computing at Barnard College’s Information Technology Department, supervising students in the Information Technology.  She also served as a Research Assistant for Mount Sinai Adolescent Health Center.  Ms. Garretson’s serves as a reviewer for federal and state discretionary grant programs.
Her background and experiences in research are quite impressive for a young woman of her age.  As part of her fellowship at the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa (CAPRISA), Ms. Garretson joined a team of South African scientists, epidemiologists, and clinicians to undertake globally relevant and locally responsive research that contributes to understanding HIV prevention and epidemiology as well as the links between multi-drug resistant and extensively-drug resistant Tuberculosis and AIDS care.  Ms. Garretson independently conducted research to establish temporal trends in M(X)DR-TB among a cohort of patients in a high HIV prevalence setting during the study period 1997 and 2009.  This project sought to bridge the gap in knowledge and describe demographic, clinical, and laboratory data for all M(X)DR-TB cases notified in this high HIV prevalence setting at King DinuZulu Hospital in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.  This fellowship provided Ms. Garretson with an opportunity to challenge my knowledge base gained through my graduate studies and to gain exposure to the process of examining and developing innovative solutions to the M(X)DR-TB and HIV co-infection epidemic in KwaZulu-Natal in order to inform local and global health policy and program planning.
Ms. Garretson’s advice to education policy makers is to promote acceleration for all students not only those who have been identified as gifted and talented or those who attend magnet schools:  “Because the people in my life had high expectations for me, I believed that I could achieve in spite of my obstacles.  Her advice to students is to seek out all opportunities, work hard, and never allow other people to limit what you are able to understand, learn, and accomplish.  The possibilities to make a positive impact on society are limitless and you do not have to wait until you are an adult to begin making a difference in society.”

Ms. Garretson earned Bachelor of Arts and an Associate of Arts Degree in Pre-Engineering and Public Health from Bard College at Simon’s Rock in 2013.  In May 2013, the published an article in the Bard Science Journal entitled:  Perceptions of the Use of Point of Care Medical Devices to Diagnose Mycobacterium tuberculosis in Haiti”.  Ms. Garretson participated in medical mission trips to Haiti and the Dominican Republic.  She also studied Global Health during the University of Virginia Semester at Sea Program.  Ms. Garretson’s research experiences include internships at the following institutions:  Ragon Institute of MGH, Harvard and MIT; Harvard Medical School; Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences; National Institutes of Health; and Drexel University. Ms. Garretson is available for speaking engagements on youth development and health education and promotion.  To book a speaking engagement contact, 301-768-1869.