Medical Student Creates STEM Camp in Rural South Africa

“When I asked him, he was hesitant,” recalls Walsh, a UB biomedical engineering graduate currently in her first semester as a medical student at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences.

“That’s just a big undertaking,” the administrator told her. “We can talk about it when you are older and have more education.”

“He was incredibly supportive with my project ideas,” Walsh says. “But I think he saw this idea as crazy. He thought it would be difficult to get that many people to agree to come.”

But Walsh is a devotee to the process; specifically, what you need step-by-step to achieve your goals and who you need on your side to make that happen. She came back to UB, “nagged” the supportive but doubtful administrator more by email and, in her mind, “I said I’ll come down and I will write the best proposal you’ve ever seen so you can’t say no.”

It worked. Walsh trialed two lessons the next time she was in South Africa in July 2022. By then, she had unofficial approval, but still wasn’t sure what it would look like. Nevertheless, the Love Must Act administrator agreed to consider a program for the following January.

“I came back to friends and classmates at UB, asking who wants to come?” says Walsh. “And I solicited enough people to keep the stations going, and then we piloted the program in January.”

Over the 2023 and 2024 winter breaks, Walsh, along with several other UB students, traveled to the Holy Cross School in Makhanda (formerly Grahamstown), South Africa, to run a weeklong STEM camp for kindergarten to seventh-grade students. She lavishes praise of the other UB volunteers who developed their hands-on lessons and curriculums, along with local sponsors donating supplies. But the foundation of the program began with that process, and grew from there.

In 2019, when Walsh was still a student at Spencerport High School, she and her cousin, Ryan Lehmann, began a pen pal program with Holy Cross, getting involved through a family friend who once lived in Durban, South Africa. There was something about working through a problem, step-by-step and engaging others who can help, that hit healthy chords in her.

“School, my teachers and my mentors have played a significant role in building my confidence and guiding me to get to where I am now,” Walsh says. “What appealed to me about the project was a chance to facilitate access to education and be a part of this exchange of knowledge and experiences from people of different backgrounds and perspectives.

“I wanted to fulfill the responsibility we have as members of higher education to share these experiences with students who will make up the next generation of engineers, scientist and innovators,” Walsh continues. “What keeps me motivated is that the project is not so much just about STEM, though it certainly started that way. It is about sustainability, self-reliance, human health and humanity.”

Now, that high school pen pal correspondence has blossomed into a weeklong, on-site program in which South African students rotate among five stations: structures, junior engineer, SCIENCE!, robotics and physical education. UB volunteers run the stations. Two high school students from the U.S. and four from the Makhanda area also have served as classroom volunteers.

While Walsh acclimates herself to medical school, her dreamchild continues.

Since returning in January, Walsh has passed the South African STEM camp torch to another UB engineering student, Sal Pino, who graduated from Walsh’s hometown high school and was a volunteer instructor for two of the camps. Pino will coordinate the camp for three years.

Walsh’s secret for success: There is a “process” to getting where you want to go, she says. Cultivating the talent and awareness is about “realizing what comes next” when chasing those goals.

So if there’s a lesson to her existing legacy — she is still just 22 years old — of an ongoing STEM school in South Africa for promising students who otherwise would have limited or no STEM curriculum, that attention to the process is it.

And ask her about the Tuesday morning breakfasts with her grandparents and their friends, where everyone around her was 65 or older, which taught her how to be confident and comfortable relating to people of all different ages and backgrounds.

All true and valuable. But Walsh’s undeniable gift of invoking trust and affinity with those she meets doesn’t hurt.

“I am excited for the future of this program because we have such passionate student volunteers and staff counterparts at the school,” says Walsh. “Their commitment to excellence makes me confident that amazing accomplishments lie ahead.”

Walsh’s long-term goal is to graduate from medical school and remain involved in the camp, incorporating more education-based health care programs. Walsh hopes to eventually spend more time in the area and help build sustainable, locally managed health clinics.  

“Our program is about bringing the resources or support needed to reach the local goals, to empower the people in the communities that we are engaging,” she says.

“No matter how big our care is for these students, their school or their community, it does not give us ownership over it, nor does it make the work we do ours to claim. I emphasize to our volunteers and reinforce to myself that lasting impact does not come from a place of pride or ownership, but partnership and collaboration.”

While medical school beckons, Walsh admits she is having trouble walking away.

“Working on initiatives that work with communities directly is something I don’t think you can ever stop doing once you start,” she says.

“Even though I have passed everything on to Sal, I still find myself calling all the time. I like to see where this is going.”