jordan francke

As a McKeen Fellow, I was responsible for supervising around 40 volunteer groups at Bowdoin, comprised of over 300 volunteers. I managed the budgets for the groups, kept up-to-date rosters of all active volunteers, and helped volunteers plan out their agendae for each semester and development goals that helped the groups to grow.

This fellowship supported my neuroendocrinological honors project research investigating the mechanism through which hormones operate to induce rapid changes in teleost physiology and behavior.

For two years while a member of the Residential Life staff, I was a residential assistant (RA) in an upperclassmen dorm. In this capacity, I served as a supportive member of my residential community: organizing programming events to connect residents with one another, supporting residents struggling with emotional and/or academic issues, and directing struggling students to appropriate resources. In my third year on residential life, I was a proctor living in a freshman dorm. This role necessitated all of the preceding duties, as well as supporting incoming students during the orientation process, assisting in the transition to college life, and providing personal and academic advice as students navigate their first year of college.

I received a Community Matters in Maine Fellowship to implement a LGBT civil rights project I had designed after being accepted to the Clinton Global Initiatives University (CGIU) in Washington, DC. This project involved researching the 60+ hospital and health care facilities in the State of Maine to determine which facilities had the most inclusive patients' bills of rights (e.g. including sexual orientation and sexual identity under their non-discrimination policies) and visitation policies for LGBT patients. Facilities that were determined to have non-inclusive policies were contacted and asked (with appropriate follow-up) to modify their policies to be more inclusive for LGBT patients.

Acceptance to this program entailed a four-day intensive crash course on civic engagement and leadership within the non-profit sector, and concluded with a full-day case study where attendees visited local struggling non-profits in the Pittsburgh metropolitan area and provided insights and advice for improvement. My organization was Ready Freddy, a new non-profit that sought to get more Pittsburgh children in non-compulsory pre-K and Kindergarten programs prior to starting first grade.

I am a research assistant for the Cost-Effectiveness of Preventing AIDS Complications (CEPAC) Group. This team uses computational modeling methods to simulate cohorts of patients living with HIV/AIDS undergoing various treatment and prevention strategies (using algorithms). This is done in order to make predictions about economic and clinical outcomes that can inform health policy organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the World Health Organization (WHO). My research focuses on interventions needed to eliminate pediatric HIV and congenital syphilis from Brazil, as well as early infant diagnosis strategies to detect HIV+ infants in South Africa.

Activities and Societies: Bowdoin College McKeen Center for the Common Good, Bowdoin Student Government, Residential Life, Bowdoin College Admissions Tour Guide, Bowdoin Information Technology (IT), Sustainable Bowdoin, Clinton Global Initiatives University (CGIU)