Stephanie Eisner spent her summer learning to give back to a community in need.

Last summer, Forty Acres Scholar Stephanie Eisner traveled to Bangladesh, where she held an internship and a research position dedicated to helping underserved rural communities.

"Bangladesh is fascinating because it's the poorest country in the world, but it's developing so fast," Eisner says. "It really felt like I was going back in time."

Eisner began her summer at Grameen Bank, a microfinance company whose founder, Muhammad Yunus, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his efforts in economic and social development.  While there, she was given the opportunity to work in rural areas outside of Urpur helping to empower women by interviewing them individually. From these personal interviews, Eisner and her fellow interns were able to create a report that will help the Grameen Bank distribute its loans more effectively.

"The goal of the internship program is educational," Eisner said. " They want us to be able to go back to our lives and use their buisness model to help people."

She then moved to a research position with the International Center for Diarrhoeal Disease Research where she worked for a week studying cholera in the short-stay unit of the hospital before transferring to study reproductive health and domestic violence in the slums. Eisner worked as a literature reviewer for a research paper about marriage and its influence on reproductive health. Through reading hundreds of academic papers, she learned about the different types of marriages in Dhaka and their effects on women.

Eisner says this summer helped her learn to be intentional in the way she helps people. She does not want to serve in a capacity that only benefits her, she says.

"I've always been really interested in finding important ways to bring about change outside of my own life and experiences," Eisner says.

As a public health major, Eisner's experience in Bangladesh gave her a greater understanding of the complexity and difficulty in the world, in addition to helping her make decisions about her future after graduation. For now, she's considering medical school to become an obstetrician/gynecologist and work abroad.

"My time in Bangladesh made me realize that life is way too short and way too precious to plan so that you can have an extensive résumé," Eisner says.

Without the Forty Acres Scholars Program, Eisner says she would have had to spend the summer working to pay for school instead of using her skills to benefit others.

"I just really feel like I've been given a lot," she says. "I see the gift that I've been given in this scholarship as something I can use so that others who aren't as fortunate can benefit as well."

Next semester—though she has no experience in engineering—Eisner will put her creative ability and biology background to use working on prosthetic hands in an engineering lab.

"UT tells you that you can be anything you want to be, " Eisner says. She has certainly taken that to heart.