Northwestern Medicine Scholars Program
Programs like NM Scholars don't just scale by adding more students. They scale through intentional systems design that ensures equity, structure, and community stay intact as complexity grows.
Role
Design Strategist
Organization
Northwestern Medicine
Youth Programming
Timeline
3 months
Summer 2025
Tools
Figma
Mural
Cursor AI
Focus
Systems Mapping
Instructional Coordination
Scalable Learning Equity
Summary
I led design strategy for a rapidly growing healthcare research program supporting 40+ underrepresented high school students.
As the program doubled in size over the past year, I used systems mapping and curriculum design to resolve bottlenecks, clarify team roles, and reframe cohort grouping around student needs. These interventions resulted in smoother delivery, more confident students, and a repeatable framework now adopted across cohorts.
50%
Boost in student participation
35%
Improved student clarity
Scaling equity-focused programs requires more than adding seats. It demands rethinking structure, roles, and rhythms to keep students supported as the system grows.
Challenge
NM Scholars empowers first-generation and underrepresented high school students to conduct real healthcare research. But as enrollment scaled, we faced structural breakdowns: fragmented communication, inconsistent instruction, unclear mentor roles, and disengagement from students in larger cohorts.
Solution
I led a systems-level design response to improve clarity, collaboration, and scalability. Key interventions included:
- Systems mapping of all program actors (students, APCs, mentors, instructors) to identify gaps in responsibility and timing
- Cohort grouping redesign, shifting from static groupings to interest-based and skill-balanced pods
- Slide + poster card templates to reduce prep anxiety and increase consistency across student deliverables
- A rubric-aligned feedback system to clarify APC expectations and reduce weekly review friction
- A milestone-based schedule and visual planning board to coordinate across instructional leads
Impact
- Reduced instructional misalignment by formalizing roles across teams
- Increased student participation in peer critique by 50%
- Cohort restructuring resulted in more equitable workload distribution
- Framework now used to onboard new instructors and scale to future NM Scholar cohorts
- +35% improvement in post-program student clarity scores (schedule, expectations, roles)
Key Decisions
- Scoped GPT prompts to build confidence, not just speed
- Removed open-ended tasks after testing showed cognitive overload
- Integrated reflection questions to surface ethical reasoning
