Attracted by the reputation of its economics department and the friendliness of its students, Emmanuel Drabo '08 of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, chose Bates College as home for the next four years in order to design an interdisciplinary major in public health. "Here I can mix political science and economics with mathematics and biology. It's very exciting," says the 20-year-old.

A lover of language and literature, Drabo writes poetry and music that he plays on his acoustic guitar. Fluent in four languages (his native French, English and two local languages of his country, Diula and Marka), he  reads and writes Italian and has begun to study German at Bates to pave the way for a junior study abroad experience.

His eagerness for such a multi-pronged course of study stems, in part, from the more narrow approach to problems he sees in his West African homeland of 12 million citizens. "My country's health care system is not helping the population," Drabo says.  "The poorer you are, the less access you have to a public health care system that focuses on medicine, not on policy." He hopes to attend graduate school in public health and to return one day to work in his country or with a nongovernmental organization.

Drabo is a 2004 graduate of United World College, New Mexico. Dedicated to promoting international understanding through education, the United World Colleges are 10 pre-university-level schools, on five continents, teaching 2,000 16-19 year-old-students.