Dionne Cole, a native of Montgomery County, came to UMBC expecting to pursue a career in biology. But after a few semesters, she found her true calling lay in the intersection of social work, public health, and social justice. Guided by her faith as well as the support of her family and the community she built at UMBC, Dionne took on a dual degree, combining her newfound passion for social work with biology. She did her social work field placement at Retriever Essentials—a partnership advancing food access at UMBC—this year and became an advocate for students experiencing food insecurity, impressing everyone with her hard work and determination to make a difference. She plans to take time next year to work, before returning to school to get her master’s in public health.
Q: What made you decide to come to UMBC?
A: During the college application process, I was actually looking to go overseas because I love traveling and also because my family is from London. But I ended up coming to UMBC because I received a good award package, and I saw how they really valued community. That was a value that I cultivated in high school that I wanted to continue fostering in college. And then, because I was interested in being a bio major, seeing how research-oriented UMBC seemed, was also appealing as well. I think I made the right choice.
Q: Did you find the community you were looking for?
A: Yeah, in a big way. My faith is a big aspect of my life, so a lot of that community that I was looking for came through a group I joined called Bethel Campus Fellowship. Just being able to be around people who are like-minded and can also support and encourage you while you are a college student—that’s a lot. I also found community in the Social Work Student Association and the Public Health Council of Majors where I was able to connect with people who had similar interests. That was empowering because I wanted to go into a field that really valued public service and valued people. Being a member in those two clubs really reinforced that for me. And my internship at Retriever Essentials, which I am just wrapping up now, has been within itself a community of people who really care about other people and want to serve.
Q: How did you choose to be a dual degree student?
A: I came in as a bio major and early on, I started realizing that I was being prepared to either go into STEM research or medicine. Those are great fields, but that’s not really what I want to do. I talked with my cousin about the healthcare field, and she explained to me the value of social work. And then I talked to a social worker at my mom’s workplace and started doing my own research, and I was like, “okay, this is a field that has what I’m looking for.”
I didn’t switch right away. I took two intro to social work classes just to see if I would like it. I fell in love with the core values, particularly social justice. I am social justice-oriented, so once I learned more about social work, I thought: This is it for me—I’m going to add social work to my degree plan and start pursuing opportunities that are more in line with that. But I still kept the bio background because I love biology.
Q: How did you end up at Retriever Essentials and what was that like for you? What did you learn?
A: I started at Retriever Essentials as a community liaison with Maryland Food Bank, largely doing SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program] outreach on campus. When it came time to choose my field placement for the social work curriculum, I chose Retriever Essentials. I learned how prevalent food insecurity is on college campuses and how much of a public health issue it is. I found out food insecurity is more prevalent on college campuses than it is among the general population because of the cost of higher ed and all of these other compounding factors.
I think that was probably the biggest thing that I learned. I didn’t know it was a public health issue when I originally came in. Through managing their Save-a-Swipe program, I met with students who were experiencing food insecurity and I assessed their situation. And that was a very interesting experience, just sitting with students and hearing them talk about all the ways in which food insecurity affects them. A lot of the students I met with were international graduate students and their stories impacted me a lot because they traveled all this way—they’re coming here to advance their education—and yet their basic needs aren’t being met. And that was just really hard to hear. But the one thing I will say about social work is that it teaches you how to take the things that you see that are very frustrating to you or heartbreaking to you, and use them as fuel to try and advocate and make things better.
Q: Did you find places at UMBC to make your voice heard?
A: Yes. I have a friend [Emmanuella Osei ’26, public health] who was also interested in food insecurity, and she had her own research project just surveying the prevalence of it on this campus. Mine was evaluating Retriever Essentials and how it’s doing at helping students overcome food insecurity. We decided to merge our projects and, with the help of my field instructor—Sue Poandl, who is also her McNair Scholar mentor—we actually got a meeting that is next week with Dr. Renique Kersh, the vice president of Student Affairs to talk about that research.
UMBC listens because when we went to my field instructor and the leaders of Retriever Support Services and Retriever Essentials about what we wanted to do, they were very much supportive and said: How can we help you get this in a place or in front of a person who can actually do something about it?
Q: Social work can be very emotionally demanding. What have you learned about self-care while you’ve prepared yourself for a career in social work and public health?
A: My field instructor says to lean on your people. I had a lot of days where, after meeting with a bunch of students, I would feel the weight of their stories and it would be very hard for me to process and think. And that goes back to having community, particularly in my faith,and being able to go to my friends who are not social work majors. They can only understand what I’m going through to a certain degree, but just being with them makes me feel lighter—even if I’m not necessarily talking about what’s bothering me. And verbally processing with them, just being able to be in their presence and have their prayers and stuff like that—it was really helpful.
Q: What impact do you think you contributed to UMBC that will be here after you are gone?
A: I would hope that it’s community—the same value that I came in wanting to foster. I hope it’s the same value that I leave behind: valuing community in every way. Because you don’t get to the finish line without your community. And community can come in so many different forms. What I get out of my fellowship community is not necessarily the same that I got out of my Retriever Essentials community. But they both helped me, and they both did their part in getting me to the finish line, and also taught me so many things that have helped me grow as a person.
I really hope that people see from me the value of the community that is around them academically. There are so many professors and staff and faculty who took jobs at a university because they wanted to help and empower students to fulfill their dreams: lean on that. Some professors might seem scary, but lean on them because most of them just want to help. Same thing with student orgs. The people who run them don’t only enjoy the interest that the club is for, but genuinely believe in the gathering of people. And yeah, I hope that I’ve added to the value of community that this university already had.
Tags: Biology, CNMS, social work