Four Stanford undergraduates have received prestigious scholarships to work full-time at TeachAids this summer. Each year, Stanford University expands its educational opportunities beyond the classroom by financing innovative research and immersive internship experiences for a handful of outstanding students.

While those awarded represent diverse interests and skill sets, each individual arrives at TeachAids with a commitment to create exceptional health education and improve learning outcomes. This unifying passion drives the team through projects that range from establishing partner relationships to working on critical research studies.

Coordinating one of these studies is Human Biology major Christine Chen ‘17, who received an Undergraduate Advising and Research Major Grant. Christine joined TeachAids last summer, dedicating her entire fall quarter to full-time work in the Palo Alto office. This summer, Christine is designing a study for her honors thesis which will help inform a major initiative at TeachAids.

“Working with the range of multidisciplinary experts at TeachAids has been inspiring and an incredible learning experience,” Christine said. “Everyone works together to best understand how to tackle challenging problems from many angles.”

The other three full-time TeachAids interns received fellowship grants from Stanford’s Haas Center for Public Service, which funds special summer service opportunities that span various disciplines.

“This has been a transformative opportunity for me,” said Katie Schneider ‘18, a Product Design major. “By the end of the summer, I will have conducted around two hundred in-depth interviews.”

Recipient of the Cardinal Course Fellowship, Katie is part of a larger team conducting qualitative research to best understand the challenges and motivations of youth in the U.S.

Ridhima Mishra ‘20 and Courtney Gao ‘20 both received the Haas Center’s Spirituality, Service and Social Change Fellowship, which provides an opportunity to reframe their service for local communities within a spiritual context. Ridhima plans to study Symbolic Systems and Courtney plans to study Human Biology. Both hope to attend medical school after their undergraduate studies.

“I first heard about TeachAids in my Global Health class taught by Senior Dean Michele Barry. I was inspired by their proven model to provide the highest quality education materials to the entire world, and that too for free,” Ridhima said. “Having worked with TeachAids for nearly a year now, I am humbled by the dedication all the volunteers have to making this vision a reality.”