Hello everyone,

I am Rachel Laleman, one of the recipients of last year’s MMCI Scholarship, as well as having received it in 2024. I wanted to reach out and again thank the board for this opportunity, and share how I have been able to succeed in school due to the scholarship helping me out, since I am unable to attend any of the shows this year as I did last year.

I am still pursuing my BSA in Neuroscience, in which I plan to graduate a year early in the Spring of 2027. I continue to work hard in school and have maintained a 3.5 GPA in my studies, and I also volunteer at the hospital closest to campus in the Emergency Department on weekends, as well as being a part of an up-and-coming volunteer program called ATX VINyL Volunteers. The program was created by a palliative care director at the hospital, and it centers around providing patients with the opportunity to listen to music using a record player and vinyl records of their choice, which provides notable benefits to health-related pain. I was welcomed in as a part of the second ever group of volunteers with this program as they work out the logistics of everything, so I see myself as a key part of program development. Additionally, the program was featured on an episode of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” of which I will include a link. 

Finally, I am excited to present my proudest accomplishment from this past year, which has to do with an organization I am in at school called Global Medical Training (GMT). The program centers itself around taking week-long trips — about five per year — to third world countries in Latin America to provide a four-day clinic in underserved communities. I was lucky enough to be able to go on a trip over winter break to the Dominican Republic, where we set up a new clinic each day in a rural area of the country near Santo Domingo. Moreover, I served as the historian for this trip, and I was tasked with taking photos and videos, and ultimately curating a trip video to showcase our adventures to be put on YouTube and the GMT website. I will include a link of my video, which I am extremely happy with and often find myself rewatching to relish in the kind memories of my trip.

As I hope I have illustrated, I am working hard in school to achieve my dreams, and all of this has been made possible by the opportunities granted to me when I received this scholarship. Again, I want to thank everyone on the MMCI Scholarship Board and MMCI as a whole, for these scholarships have made my undergraduate experience extremely fruitful. Thank you so much!

Best regards,

Rachel Laleman

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/nx-s1-5647793