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Published April 30, 2026
By Darlene Muguiro
¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ College of Health Sciences

This May, five CHS students will serve in honorific roles at the Spring 2026 commencement ceremony at the Don Haskins Center. These students were selected for their positions based on academic achievement, extracurricular participation, and community and University service. Our fourth story features Josdell Guerra Ruiz, Graduate Student Marshal.

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Josdell Guerra Ruiz, a candidate for the Master of Public Health degree, says that she found her passion for public health during a planned journey into medicine. Following completion of a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences, Guerra Ruiz set her sights on medical school and decided to enter the MPH program to strengthen her application. About midway through the program, she experienced an “unexpected shift” that completely changed her trajectory.

“I felt such a strong admiration for those in the public health field that I put a pause on medical school,” she said. “My MPH was a path of self-discovery, where I gained confidence and learned a lot.”

During her first year in the program, Guerra Ruiz balanced her coursework with roles as a teaching assistant, president of the Medical Profession Organization, and member of the BioErgonomics Laboratory, where she worked as part of an interdisciplinary team of undergraduate, graduate and doctoral student researchers focused on occupational and environmental health. She also served on the College of Health Sciences Advisory Board, representing her peers and advocating for their needs to college administrators.

As part of the BioErgonomics team, Guerra Ruiz worked alongside doctoral students in health sciences and environmental engineering, gaining critical interdisciplinary skills such as geospatial analysis, advanced statistical modeling, risk assessments, and biomechanical analyses. She presented a first-author poster presentation at the American Meteorological Society – one of only four health-related projects selected for the prestigious conference. Additionally, she collaborated on six oral presentations at the International Society for Occupational Ergonomics and Safety. Eventually, she began working as a graduate research assistant at the Center for Transportation and Infrastructure Systems, working on projects at the intersection of engineering and public health.

“These experiences were very empowering and shaped me a professional and as a person, forcing me to ask questions, learn new topics from scratch, operate specialized equipment, train undergraduate students, and conduct primary field data,” she said. 

After graduation, Guerra Ruiz plans to pursue a PhD in Civil, Environmental, and Construction Engineering at ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ.

“In my time in the MPH program, I learned the importance of promoting and advancing the field of public health,” she said. “In the future, I aim to be a professional problem solver who can provide more comprehensive occupational and environmental assessments to exposed populations, creating improved targeted mitigation strategies.”

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