Exploring Public Health at the CDC

By her third year as a premed student at Oberlin, Cheyenne Arthur has already had the opportunity to observe surgical and other clinical activities in a hospital setting. Arthur is expanding the depth of her range of experiences this summer by working as an intern with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta.

Arthur, a biochemistry major and sociology minor, is working with the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS) team at the CDC. The NARMS team, she explains, is responsible for monitoring and preventing drug-resistant bacteria outbreaks. The team works closely with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration to find out if the drug-resistant bacteria originate from food or animals.

“While with the NARMS team, I attended several meetings regarding current outbreaks and also helped interpret and sort data pertaining to Salmonella Infantis. I think the most interesting part of this internship has been hearing about all of the current outbreaks and what actions were being taken against them before the outbreaks were announced to the general public.”

Arthur, an Atlanta native, applied for the internship because wanted to understand more about the public health field.

“This internship aligns with my career interests because it exposes me to an area of medicine that I have never experienced before. There are so many different careers within the medical field, so I think it is important to try to explore some of those options.”

This is her first research experience outside of Oberlin. During her freshman year, she conducted research on molecular dynamics simulation and protein folding with Visiting Assistant Professor Zoey Hua.

A scholar athlete, Arthur is a guard on the women’s basketball team. In addition to athletics, Arthur works as a quantitative skills tutor in the Center for Learning, Education, and Research in the Sciences and as a student worker at Philips Physical Education Center.