Christine Burke ’22: Helping Others Helped Discover a Passion

During Christine's time at Emmanuel, her internships at Boston Children’s Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, as well as her cocurricular activities, “confirmed my strong calling to help people and made me comfortable in speaking to people from all walks of life.”

Her coursework in adult psychopathology and child psychopathology allowed her to study abnormal cognition and behavior through the lens of social norms and constructs, offering a broader perspective of the human experience. “In a clinical sense, I gained so many skills in terms of diagnostic and assessment techniques, but our faculty also made us aware of the need for more compassion for those who have mental disorders,” she said.

With an internship in Boston Children’s Hospital’s trauma department already on her resume, Christine spent her senior year serving as an intern for the volunteer and family services team at nearby Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. There, she worked directly with patients and caregivers and facilitated the distribution of resources on the non-clinical side of care, including building the online resource library, filming instructional videos, hosting webinars, and serving as a feedback liaison between patients and senior leadership. In addition to building her professional network of social workers, nurses, doctors and senior leadership at Dana-Farber, she learned what it means to make an impact within a team and in the workplace.

Christine’s co-curriculars also shaped her time on campus, and the person she grew into. As an admissions ambassador, she was able to master public speaking. As a resident assistant, she learned how to mediate conflict, counsel peers and assess situations professionally and compassionately. And as an Alternative Spring Break Leader, she further explored a key competence needed for her intended career—that all persons inherently have meaning, purpose and value. “People have dignity and that dignity deserves to be consistently affirmed. I now know how to build a community where all feel welcome, appreciated and valued.”

After graduation, Christine began pursuing a Master of Arts in Higher Education Administration Lynch School of Education and Human Development at Boston College, and is also serving as a graduate assistant in the Office of Student Engagement.