Mary Arakelyan, MD ’29, hopes to bring collaboration and data-driven needs assessment to the Society of Graduate and Professional Students (SGPS).
Running uncontested, the core pillars of Arakelyan’s platform include integration across professional students, needs assessment, and awareness of professional and financial opportunities. The vice-president (professional), who “represents and advocates” for all SGPS members by acting as a “liaison” between the students, faculty, and the University administration to enhance the student experience.
With a background studying public health, and as a research project manager at Dartmouth Health focused on child health and pediatric care, Arakelyan believes she can bring her vision to reality.
“Having that experience of being a graduate student and then a working professional, and now a professional student, I think I really came to appreciate how collaborative and interprofessional the real world is,” Arakelyan said in an interview with The Journal.
As the current representative for medicine on the SGPS council, Arakelyan feels she can leverage her experience in student government to continue to build on the work of the SGPS. She also plans to utilize what she’s learned under the current vice-president (professional) to continue with needs-based assessment. .
“I would really want to continue that work of assessing student needs in a formal and systematic way and apply those learnings,” she said.
The current assessment of professional student needs ensures professional students’ needs are assessed from a high-level data driven perspective, so the most pressing concerns can be addressed quickly and succinctly. The initiative is still collecting responses, but Arakelyan expressed the power of needs analysis to inform SGPS programming.
Arakelyan plans to create increased opportunities for interprofessional education and learning. She feels it’s important for professional students to work together across disciplines, not only in the social and extracurricular setting, but in the classroom as well. She described encountering medical case law in one of her classes and wishing she could get input from her law school peers.
“Trying to advocate for interprofessional educational opportunities between those [professional] students will be my priority,” Arakelyan said.
Highlighting the need for better communication across graduate programs, Arakelyan said many students remain unaware of opportunities simply because information’s often siloed within student clubs and programs.
She explained that some information regarding grants and bursaries may be released more broadly but often is shared within clubs and communities that are inaccessible to professional students who may not have the time or capacity to join extracurriculars. To address this, Arakelyan wants to work closely with student societies to ensure information is disseminated evenly.
Though uncontested, Arakelyan plans to take in feedback and work with the professional student body throughout the campaigning process. Arakelyan expressed not wanting the uncontested nature of the race to “dampen the fire for campaigning.”
Arakelyan hopes to become a figure professional students feel comfortable coming to with their concerns, and confident she’ll implement her suggestions.
The All-Candidates Debate took place on Jan. 26 on Zoom at 6 p.m., and voting will be open from Jan. 29 to 30, with the successful candidates announced on Jan. 31.
Tags
Elections 2026, SGPS elections, SGPS Vice-President (Professional)
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