Alumni / About Us / Alumni Awards / Young Alumna or Alumnus Award

Young Alumna or Alumnus Award

Celebrating our alumni leaders

This award recognizes an alumna or alumnus whose life has expressed the finest of College of Charleston traditions through service to his or her community or profession. The recipient’s class year must be within the past ten years.

Submit a 2022 Alumni Awards Nomination »

2021 Young Alumnus Award

Adeyemi M. Oduwole ’19   

Born in Bronx, New York, Adeyemi “Yemi” Oduwole was raised in a Nigerian-American family who emphasized the importance of academics. After high school, he came to the College of Charleston and majored in biology. As an undergraduate, he collaborated with NASA during the solar eclipse in 2017, and was named a National Geographic Explorer by the National Geographic Society in 2018 to conduct research which analyzed the DNA of ancient African slaves found in Charleston and its relationship to African Americans living in Charleston today.

He frequently traveled to Nigeria with his family where he was exposed to the socioeconomic determinants of health. Understanding the disparities in healthcare gave him a passion for global health and biomedical research. As a student, he co-founded United African Students, was an Office of Admissions Student Ambassador, and served as SC Alliance for Minority Participation public relations chair. In 2019, he received the ExCEL Award for the School of Sciences and Mathematics Outstanding Student of the Year.

He continued his education at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City where he earned a Master of Public Health in 2021. Additionally, he worked with the NYC Department of Health and ContraCOVID NYC to ensure New Yorkers received access to resources during the pandemic. Presently, he is a post-baccalaureate student at Temple University in Philadelphia preparing for medical school.

Young Alumna or Alumnus Award Past Recipients

* Deceased