By Terri Schwartz
Helen Pham, a junior chemistry major, was one of five students recently waiting to give her acceptance speech at the Harvard Club, an exclusive social club in Boston for Harvard alumni and associates. Of the students who won the Gallagher Koster Scholarship for health-related careers, she was the only one from Massachusetts.
When it was her turn to speak to the assembled audience, Pham delivered a speech about the experiences that led her to win the $3,000 scholarship.
“I was expecting to say something, but didn’t expect to write a full-blown speech, so I kind of had to,” Pham said. “It turned out to be good. I talked about my experiences.”
The Koster Insurance Health Careers Scholarship Program has helped more than 30 upperclassmen students for their health-related career over the past seven years, according to its website.
Each recipient must have “a strong motivation to pursue a healthcare career, academic excellence, a dedication to community service, and a need for financial support of their education,” according to the website. Students must have taken one health-related class, have at least a 3.0 Grade Point Average (GPA), and write an essay explaining their professional goals as related to health care, the site stated.
“Even if you don’t have a 4.0 GPA, and even if you don’t have perfect grades, you can still get a scholarship as long as you show that you’re dedicated,” said Pham.
Pham wrote her essay about her experiences dealing with her mother’s cancer scare while in she was in high school.
Pham said she felt it was her determination and commitment to Northeastern’s chemistry program that helped her receive the award.
Robert Hanson, a professor at Northeastern in the department of chemistry and chemical biology, said he felt Pham was superior to the student she modestly described in her speech.
“She was one of the best students that I taught in the Organic Chemistry for major laboratory,” he said. “She is smart, inquisitive, meticulous, independent, and has a critical mind and a wonderful personality.”
Pham, who accepted her award Sept. 25, said that she had a strong support system with her at the dinner: her advisor and her boyfriend.
Pham said her mother inspired her to follow a passion for chemistry to begin with.
“It scared me into wanting to help,” Pham said of the colon cancer scare her mother went through.
Pham applied to Northeastern’s pre-med program. During her freshman year, she won a Merck Scholarship, an award provided by The United Negro College Fund, Inc. and the The Merck Institute For Science Education Research Laboratories for outstanding African American students studying biomedical research. This allowed her to do breast cancer research alongside Professor Hanson. After that experience, she decided to continue to study chemistry.
“She was able to use that experience to obtain a coop position in one of the research laboratories at Novartis in Cambridge, MA where, based upon the comments of one her supervisors who I met later at a meeting, she did great work, Hanson said.
Julie Fobert, marketing coordinator for Gallagher Koster, said ta scholarship board of directors that represent many fields within the health care and higher education communities selected the five scholarship winnders. She said that Pham’s “very strong essay about her passion towards a health career,” which related back to her mother’s cancer scare, helped Pham win the scholarship.
“It pretty much lifted away my worries because I had someone to help me,” Pham said.
In addition to her Merck and Gallagher Koster scholarships, Pham also won a scholarship from the Boston Biomedical Research Institute when she was in high school in Watertown.
“I feel that chemistry is a really good major because you get to do research,” Pham said. “I really had done something that can affect a lot of people and, not only that, it can help a lot of people.”
