Dawne M. Harris Mouzon (Ph.D. student in Sociology, Rutgers University; M.P.H., Epidemiology, UMDNJ-School of Public Health, 2004; B.A., Rutgers University, 2000) was a former Project L/EARN intern in 1998, under the mentorship of Dr. Jane Miller. Since 1999, she has served on the Project L/EARN instructional staff for six years (four years as a Teaching Assistant, and two years as the Course Instructor). She has contributed significantly to the curriculum of Project L/EARN, having improved the structure and content of the curriculum between 2002 and 2003.

As an undergraduate at Rutgers College, Dawne was a double major in Psychology and Africana Studies. However, being mentored by Dr. Jane Miller during Project L/EARN first exposed her to the idea of applied work in public health and policy. This experience led Dawne to pursue an M.P.H. in Epidemiology from the UMDNJ-School of Public Health. While completing her M.P.H., she served as a Graduate Assistant for the Center for State Health Policy, gaining valuable experience in the area of health and public policy. In addition to her work at CSHP and her continued mentorship from Dr. Miller, Dawne felt fortunate to have the opportunity to work with other distinguished Institute faculty such as Dr. Louise Russell, with whom she co-authored a 2005 article.

After completing her M.P.H. in 2004, Dawne worked full-time for two years as the Research Associate for the Department of Medicine at UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School, where she was primarily responsible for project management and grant-writing. In 2004, she was awarded the Division Member of the Year Award for Excellence in Leadership.

Dawne credits all of her educational, research, and work accomplishments to the important skills and lessons she first began to acquire as a Project L/EARN intern. She remains grateful for the continued guidance from her formal and informal mentors at IHHCPAR, who helped shape her educational/career aspirations, in addition to teaching her valuable life lessons and encouraging her to pursue her educational goals.

Dawne has been awarded an Excellence Fellowship from IHHCPAR for this fall, when she will be returning to Rutgers as a doctoral student in the sociology department. Dawne's research interests center around medical sociology, patient-provider communication, trust, and decision-making in the clinical encounter. Upon graduation, she hopes to join the faculty at a major research university.

Theresa Simpson is an alumna of the 2003 Project L/EARN class and this is her first year as an instructor for Project L/EARN’s summer research program. In May 2004, she received a joint Bachelors of Science degree from University College and the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, where she majored in Public Health and minored in Statistics. Under the guidance of Dr. Dorothy Gaboda, she completed a summer research project about racial and ethnic disparities in willingness to utilize Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs). During the following academic year, Drs. Dorothy Gaboda and Jane Miller served as academic advisors for her senior thesis about maternal status and Pap smear compliance. In the fall, Theresa will enter the doctoral program in Demography at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

According to Theresa, as a consequence of Project L/EARN, her senior year was “very eventful and exciting”. She presented a poster about her summer research project at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS) in San Diego, where she networked with representatives from a myriad of universities and bonded with her fellow Project L/EARN classmates. She also had the opportunity to be a student assistant for Dr. Jane Miller’s Research Methods course during the fall 2003 semester and to intern for Dr. Dorothy Gaboda at the Center for State Health Policy during the 2003/2004 academic year. Theresa says that, “Project L/EARN has expanded her educational and career opportunities more than [she] ever imagined prior to entering the program. Without Project L/EARN, [she] would not have the opportunity to attend Princeton, which is an opportunity of a lifetime.”