When junior Sana Boghani first came to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, she immediately began investigating opportunities on and off campus that could benefit her long-term goals and interests. She declared her major in communication studies as an incoming freshman, but the academic and extracurricular endeavors she\u2019s undertaken since becoming a Vol have helped develop\u00a0 a clearer idea of what her future career could look like.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always enjoyed my English and research courses in high school, so no other major\u00a0 resonated with me except communication studies. I didn\u2019t know what I wanted to do with the major initially and what my niche would be in communication studies, but I ended up discovering that at the end of my freshman year and beginning of my sophomore year,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In her senior year of high school, she conducted a year-long research project about social support utilization among breast cancer survivors that culminated in a 5,000-word academic paper and a 20-minute oral presentation. Once she came to UT, one of the many student activities Boghani immersed herself in during her first year at UT was penning The Wellness Formula,<\/em> a column for the student-run campus newspaper, The Daily Beacon. <\/em>It was when she was talking about these health-centered projects to School of Communication Studies Lecturer Megan Fields that a connection was made.<\/p>\n \u201cShe asked if I had considered a career in health communication, but\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know what that was about or what that entailed, so she connected me with Dr. Laura Miller,\u201d Boghani said, noting that Miller\u2019s primary area of expertise and research interests is in health communication.\u00a0<\/p>\n Once Boghani met with Miller, she quickly realized that health communications\u2014specifically public health\u2014was the niche she\u2019d been hoping to find in her field. She made public health her minor and plans to earn a master\u2019s degree in public health after completing her undergraduate studies.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMy \u2018why\u2019 behind choosing this area is to really focus on improving the quality of life for people and improving health equity for all individuals and communities\u2014regardless of background, literacy and other factors\u2014so that they are able to access optimal health in their daily activities and not just in a medical sense. I want to empower people to access health in a way that best works for them,\u201d she explained. \u201cHealth communication is all about delivering health-related information and knowledge in a way that is accurate and culturally appropriate, and those are the areas I\u2019m interested in developing.\u201d<\/p>\n Since then, Boghani served in two different internships her sophomore year that align with her interest in health communications: first, as a communications intern for St. Jude\u2019s Children\u2019s Research Hospital\u2019s Department of Global Pediatric Medicine, and then as an intern for the Knox County Health Department (KCHD).\u00a0<\/p>\n The two internships were fully remote and hybrid, respectively, which allowed the busy student to work at both during the summer of 2024. Each gave her a look into different aspects of communication and grew her skill set in ways she said will help set her up for future success.\u00a0<\/p>\n In her internship for the KCHD, Boghani got to see first-hand what it looks like to ensure a community gets vital information via health communications. She initially applied for an internship through the department and was told she didn\u2019t get one, but she received a request later on to evaluate a variety of public-facing materials like pamphlets, fliers, and brochures and ensure those materials were accessible to a wide audience. She provided that evaluation and gave KCHD\u2019s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee\u00a0 her results in two presentations.<\/p>\n \u201cThat internship reinforced my goal in bridging the gap between health communications and public health, and I realized that goal has a lot of value in the field and there are many ways to make it\u00a0 a reality. By focusing on those documents for accessibility, I was taking health literacy into account, so I had to think about who my audience was and how to communicate with them,\u201d she said. \u201cThat internship translated my goals into practice, and I could see what it may look like to make those two disciplines work together.\u201d<\/p>\n At the St. Jude\u2019s internship, Boghani did a variety of work such as editing pieces written for the Department of Global Pediatric Medicine, transcribing interviews her supervisor conducted with global partners of the hospital, and writing some blogs. While this internship did not have a public health focus, it did give her an opportunity to put into practice foundational skills that she can transfer to a variety of communication jobs.\u00a0<\/p>\n The St. Jude\u2019s internship grew out of a chance meeting when Boghani was giving a tour of the College of Communication and Information in her service role as one of its Land Ambassadors. One of the parents attending the tour asked\u00a0 her questions about her career interests and, when he found out she wanted to pursue health communications, he handed her his St. Jude business card and told her to reach out\u2014which she did a couple months later.\u00a0<\/p>\n Serving as a CCI Land Ambassador is just one of several roles that Boghani has held both on and off the UT campus. The jobs, volunteering, and extracurricular activities she\u2019s pursued have created a very busy life for the student, but everything she does has contributed to her life positively; hence, she continues to look for those opportunities. She also serves as the UT Global Studies Club president, was a member of the UT Chamber Singers for three semesters, and has worked for the Ignite Program at UT since 2023.<\/p>\n The Ignite program through the Clay and Debbie Jones Center for Leadership and Service<\/a> is an extended orientation that connects new Vols to a variety of experiences on campus, and it has been formative for Boghani in fostering her leadership skills and making her feel at home at UT.<\/p>\n \u201cIgnite was the place where I truly\u00a0 found my sense of community on campus. Community is at the core of what it means to be a Tennessee Volunteer, but that realization of, \u2018I really do belong in a community here on campus.\u2019 arose from my involvement with the Ignite program,\u201d she said. \u201cIn any experience, I always try to find\u00a0 that sense of community where I am surrounded by great people who uplift me and inspire me to be a better leader and person.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n While she wasn\u2019t a participant in Ignite during her own first year, Boghani applied to and accepted a job as a team leader for the program. She had a lot of uncertainty around her success in the role, but when she was asked to come back again the next year, she realized that she\u2019d made an impact.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMy experience in the second year was much better in terms of knowing how to more effectively facilitate the program for students. And I was more comfortable and confident with being myself and bringing my own story forward,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Boghani moved up from being a team leader to her current position as the Ignite student director of experience, where she is getting hands-on experience in planning sessions and working behind-the-scenes of the program.\u00a0<\/p>\n As research was one of the draws of declaring the communication studies major, it\u2019s no surprise that Boghani has excelled in this area of her studies. She is in the Communication Studies Honors Program, which requires her to take three graduate-level courses. These courses tend to be more research-heavy than undergraduate classes and have reinforced her passion for academic scholarship. .<\/p>\n \u201cI found those courses very valuable as someone who loves to conduct research, analyze existing scholarly work, and improve my skills as a writer,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n One of Boghani\u2019s research papers she wrote for a graduate-level organizational communication class with School of Communication Studies Associate Professor Emily Paskewitz was so well-done that Paskewitz admonished her to submit it to the Southern States Communication Association Conference. The paper, which is about Boghani\u2019s experience working with the Ignite program and the leadership skills she\u2019s gained from it, was accepted and Boghani will present it at the conference this April.\u00a0<\/p>\n In addition to her communication studies work, Boghani also conducted research for her minor in public health with Department of Public Health Assistant Professor Phoebe Tran in her first and second year at UT. She worked on two projects focused on state-wide access to outpatient stroke and cardiac rehabilitation, respectively, both of which she presented at UT Discovery Day<\/a> and\u00a0the Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement (EUR\u0113CA).<\/a><\/p>\n Her dedication to academics will result in an early graduation date in December 2025, which means Boghani will have some time to catch her breath in between her undergraduate and graduate studies. She\u2019s appreciated her UT experience so much in both her major and minor areas of study that the Master of Public Health from the UT Department of Education, Health, and Public Sciences is at the top of her list of programs to apply to for her graduate degree.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI fell in love with UT my first semester and I\u2019m really fortunate to be here,\u201d she said. \u201cI think the fact that UT is such a huge school has a lot of advantages; there really is something for everyone in terms of student organizations, majors, and other programs that immerse you into the Knoxville community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When junior Sana Boghani first came to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, she immediately began investigating opportunities on and off campus that could benefit her long-term goals and interests. She declared her major in communication studies as an incoming freshman, but the academic and extracurricular endeavors she\u2019s undertaken since becoming a Vol have helped develop\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":51777,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-student-spotlight"],"yoast_head":"\nIgniting the Volunteer spirit<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Research-minded<\/strong><\/h2>\n