Erin Palm is the 2005 winner of the William W. Whitley Citizen Scholar Prize

Erin Palm (’05) completed a B.S. in Earth Systems with joint concentrations in environmental economics and human health and environmental policy. Erin currently is working toward her M.D. at Stanford Medical School and hopes to complete a concurrent M.B.A. as well.  She has worked as a healthcare volunteer in Ecuador and Nepal, and has been an active leader in volunteer programs around the Stanford campus. 

During winter quarter of her junior year, Erin worked at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency preparing a paper for the non-medical public about the increasing rates of asthma in the U.S. and the associated environmental triggers.  Her report synthesized years of E.P.A. research on epidemiology, toxicology, immunology, pediatrics, and exposure assessment, and its subsequent publication is a service to the community for whom the highly technical material would otherwise have been inaccessible.

As an undergraduate Erin directed SCOPE, a volunteer and shadowing program for pre-medical undergraduates in Bay Area emergency departments. She supervised 50 student interns and interpreters and led program development activities such as a medical Spanish training opportunity in Mexico. Erin also worked as a staff supervisor for the Quest Scholars Program and was a founding staff member of QuestBridge, a program linking talented low-income high school students with educational and scholarship opportunities at the nation’s best colleges.

Her awards include a University of Pennsylvania Gamble Scholarship recognizing potential to make a difference in health care, the Lyon’s Award for Outstanding Community Service from the Stanford Dean of Students’ Office, a Richard and Patricia Balch Scholarship, and a membership to the Cap and Gown Honor Society.  Erin also received a Major Grant from the Stanford Undergraduate Research Programs to conduct a cross-cultural health care study in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

Erin played for Stanford’s intramural soccer team, and was a member of both the Stanford Chamber Chorale and the Stanford University Singers.