Grace Hilbert
Creighton University’s Global Scholars Program is a four-year educational and professional development program designed to immerse select students in a variety of cultures for a rich academic, social and service experience. Grace Hilbert is among the program’s first graduating class.
Student accesses wider world through global study
A student portal urging her to apply for Creighton University’s Global Scholars Program proved Grace Hilbert’s gateway to a wider world.
“I grew up in a little bubble in a suburb of Milwaukee where everybody looked like me and talked like me,” she says. “I knew that was not really what the world was like, and I wanted to experience other cultures. Global Scholars let me do that.”
The Global Scholars Program, founded four years ago by Creighton University President the Rev. Daniel S. Hendrickson, SJ, PhD, provides four global study and service experiences during four years of study. Two of those — Australia and the Dominican Republic — were common to all participants. Going forward, Sydney, Australia, has been replaced by Bologna, Italy.
“I knew I wanted to be a physician,” says Hilbert, who will graduate in May as part of Creighton’s first Global Scholars cohort. “The patients I will interact with won’t all look like me, so I think Global Scholars gave me an opportunity to learn about different cultures and people, how to treat them respectfully and how to empathize.”
A course Hilbert took at the University of Sydney in Australia concerning indigenous peoples impressed her, she said, as she realized Australians know much more about indigenous history and culture than Americans know about their native peoples.
“I think it’s important to understand what people have gone through in order to empathize with them, so that was a really cool takeaway about Australia,” she says.
Hilbert, as a biology major, found her semester in the Dominican Republic boosted her understanding of global health disparities.
“The Dominican Republic was probably the most special semester of my college time,” she says. “I learned a lot about all the different things that contribute to a person's health — their access to water, their access to food, their emotional well-being.”
While there, she volunteered at a St. Vincent de Paul hospice center for low-income elderly and was able to see Dominican healthcare in practice by observing physical therapists and occupational therapists.
“It was really very special,” she says. “I want to carry these experiences to become a compassionate caregiver, providing care in line with cultural expectations.”
