Three School of Public Health students awarded Completion of Research and Creative Activity fellowship
This semester, three School of Public Health graduate students received Completion of Research and Creative Activity fellowships from San Diego State University’s College of Graduate Studies. The CORE fellowship provides one year of funding towards a student’s dissertation, thesis, or culminating experience, according to the College of Graduate Studies website.
The recipients include Brittney Ayala, Sunny Mangiameli, and Araz Majnoonian, each of whom belong to a different SPH graduate program. Their respective projects and dissertations exemplify the diverse work within the SPH.
Ayala is a master’s graduate student in the Health Promotion & Behavioral Sciences program. Her project focuses on student usage of wellness services in a San Diego middle school. She investigates students’ motivations and deterrents for using the school’s wellness center and whether the center is providing the resources they need. With this project, she said, she hopes to help amplify students’ voices.
“The school community I am working with is underserved and under-resourced, so I hope my project can show the student population and their campus community that research can provide an opportunity for their voices to be heard,” she said.
Ayala has worked with the youth for nearly two years, but this is the first project she has created herself, calling it her “passion project.” She feels “humbled and grateful” to receive the recognition and support of the fellowship, she said.
Mangiameli, another recipient in the SPH, is a Global Health Management and Policy master’s graduate student. Their project surveys front desk staff in San Diego OB-GYNs and women’s health clinics about their knowledge and attitudes toward transgender and nonbinary patients.
They started the project after observing a disparity in the number of studies regarding competency in transgender patient care. They found that while several studies focused on clinician competency, there were none which evaluated front desk and administrative staff.
Mangiameli said they hope their project will address — and ultimately improve — LGBTQIA+ competency training among non-clinical staff. With support from the fellowship, these goals are within closer reach.
“This funding makes it possible to recruit a larger and more representative sample, which will ultimately strengthen the quality and impact of the research findings,” they said. “To me, this recognition reflects SDSU's commitment to supporting research in LGBTQ+ health.”
The third recipient, Majnoonian, is a joint doctoral program global health scholar at SDSU and University of California, San Diego. Her dissertation examines domestic violence support services in Armenia in order to inform current and future improvements to these services. She spent the first half of this year in Armenia conducting research and collecting data.
Her fellowship will go toward transcribing and translating data into Armenian so that it can be shared with stakeholders in Armenia, she said.
“This support allows survivor and provider voices to be authentically represented in the transcripts, strengthening both the academic integrity and community impact of my research,” she said.
All three of these projects will receive funding from the fellowship until August 2026, at which point Ayala, Mangiameli, and Majnoonian will each present their progress and accomplishments.
