2024 Great Grads: John Josiah
Image
John Josiah never thought he could make an impact beyond the borders of his home country of Nigeria. Several years after coming to America, a place where he had no immediate family, Josiah will cross the stage as the salutatorian of the Class of 2024.
“In many ways, my dreams were measured,” he said. “Coming to the U.S. and to JCSU changed that because I felt like I had been given the license to dream big, even if those dreams terrified me. I discovered that my dreams were within reach and my voice could reverberate across not just Africa, but the world!”
Josiah will graduate with a degree in Biology with minors in Bioinformatics and Chemistry. Since his arrival to JCSU, he has garnered a long list of academic and social accomplishments. He has served as president and vice president of the Minority Association of Premedical Students, the treasurer of Beta Kappa Chi Biology Honor Society, the secretary for the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers and an academic committee member of the Student Government Association.
He has also served as a research intern at Stanford Cardiovascular Institute, JCSU’s Office of Institutional Effectiveness and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has secured a spot as a Stanford University Innovation Fellow, Building Interfaith Leadership Initiative Fellow, an American Heart Association SURE scholar, Faith in the Vaccine Ambassador, a student tutor, and much more!
But a standout moment of his time at JCSU was experiencing something he had never seen in his entire life: snow.
“I had seen the weather forecast that it was going to snow in Charlotte, and I was giddy,” he remembered. “I woke up a couple of times that night, opened my windows and saw nothing. Around 5 a.m., I opened my windows again with sleepy eyes and saw a sea of white. I couldn’t sleep anymore, and as soon as it was bright enough, I got out of bed and took a tour around campus. The campus looked so beautiful, and I just walked around taking pictures.”
Immediately following graduation, Josiah will be completing an internship at Columbia University Medical Center in New York. After completing that, he will begin working toward his master’s degree in Applied Analytics at Columbia on a full-ride scholarship.
Josiah credits God for his “mercy and goodness every step of the way.” He also thanked his family, both biological and the family he has come to know at JCSU; his church community; his friends; all of his professors, including Drs. William T. Booth, Antonio Henley, Sunil Gupta, Sabina Otienoburu, Roslyn Reid, Tracey Brown-Fox, Kendal Mobley, Thomas Flemming, Ronda Bibbs, Debra Terrell, Mark Dugo, Aman Nadhiri, Sujeewa Hapuarachchi, and Alexa von Dolen; Wanda Middleton and Kenyatta Reed; and Terik Tidwell, former leader of the Smith Innovation Center.
“I’d also like to thank the generous donors and alumni who made this possible and who continue to ensure that students from all over the world can come to JCSU and leave ready to take on the world,” he added.