Featured Student: Nia Stefanov
Major (College): Biological Sciences (A&S)
Additional Honors and Scholarship Communities: Pre-Medical Certificate, Cincinnatus
Post-Graduation Plan: Graduate study in UC’s Accelerated Master’s of Nursing program
Advice to Current UHP Students: “Keep your head up and take the interesting class, not everything has to feed your major directly. Even if you think there is no way that it helps you directly, I promise it will eventually.”
Experiences:
- Tales of Resilience
- Created Equal honors seminar
- Ethics & Inquiry in the Public Sphere honors seminar
- The Human Condition honors seminar
- Welcome Mentor
I am so glad that I found a program that let me branch out and learn more than just my bubble of knowledge.
Nia Stefanov UHP Graduate, 2026
Nia's UHP Journey
For Nia Stefanov, her time with the UHP has been a journey through “they study of people, why we do what we do, why we feel what we do”—questions that, while foundational to the empathy and communication skills needed in her dream profession of nursing, were not a part of the coursework in her Biological Sciences major.
In a Fall 2025 honors seminar, Ethics and Inquiry in the Public Sphere, Stefanov learned to take part in, and to facilitate, open dialogue around philosophical and ethical questions. She cites the skills gained in first practicing and then mentoring others toward “seeing both sides no matter the situation, and trying not to jump to conclusions” as essential to both her personal and academic successes since then, and recognizes them as a valuable asset in her future nursing career.
“The UHP has helped me prepare the human side of me for my patients,” Stefanov says, as she looks ahead from this foundation toward her Fall 2026 entry into UC’s Accelerated Master’s of Nursing (AMSN). “I still use those skills on a daily basis.”