Johanne Harrigan

2024 Graduate Student Peer Mentors Award

Johanne's oral history project focuses on individuals who participated in community polio vaccination drives in Maricopa and Pima Counties in 1962.  The 2 counties piloted the nation's first mass vaccination campaigns for the Sabin oral polio vaccine, and their model was replicated on a national level contributing to the eventual eradication of polio in the U.S. Her research will reveal personal stories that tell why people chose to attend the vaccination days and may shed light on what factors motivate individuals to seek vaccinations toda

A remarkably engaged peer mentoring group, the History Graduate Association (HGA) plays a critically important role in the success not just for our graduate students but for undergraduates and for other graduate students across campus. They are a model of a peer mentoring community. Both through its individual peer mentor program for new students and through its work as a peer mentor community, the HGA serves as a raft that buoys fellow students through the ebbs and flows of graduate school.