Twenty students gathered in Yale School of Medicine’s (YSM) Café Med on March 6, for an evening mixer for YSM students and visiting international students. First-year MD students Kexin Meng and Fabrizio Darby, and fifth-year MD student Chaney Kalinich—who are the Office of Global Health Education’s student coordinators for global health—organized the dinner gathering.
The event was an opportunity for YSM students to welcome the visiting students to the YSM community. It also was a chance for current YSM students to learn more about global health. Six of the visiting student attendees— two from Saudi Arabia, two from India, and one each from Germany and the United Kingdom—are at Yale for one-month clinical electives; five of the attendees are visiting from China for a two-year research program.
“The student coordinators were delighted by the diversity of the students who attended the mixer, coming not just from different countries, institutions, and class years but also representing different interests in research and medicine,” said Meng. “We loved seeing students exchange contact information and trade stories about their home institutions and their experiences in New Haven so far, and though we may not all be in the same physical location for very long, we feel that the connections formed tonight have the potential to really expand into meaningful friendships and partnerships.”