When Emme Magliato ’23 arrived at Yale in the fall of 2019, she had in her mind that New Haven could become a new home and not just a college experience. “As someone who is so much about community and building community,” she recalls, “I was seeking out spaces in the beautiful city,” where she could live them out. She found that space in Dwight Hall.
During her time at Dwight Hall, Emme worked with Community Health Educators (CHE), a student organization committed to peer health education. Working with CHE, Emme collaborated with New Haven high school and middle school students to conduct workshops and deliver citywide health education in a participatory manner.
Emme remained involved with Dwight Hall through several of its programs. During summer 2022, she was a Dwight Hall Summer Fellow — a program introduced in 1968 to provide full-time, paid internships for students to engage in social work with local partners. Emme was a Summer Fellow with the Sex Workers and Allies Network (SWAN), doing street outreach in a needle exchange van and distributing survival gear to Connecticut residents.
In addition to her Summer Fellow experience, Emme worked directly with Dwight Hall by partaking in the Community Mental Health Fellowship program. Launched in 2018 as a collaborative initiative between the Connecticut Mental Health Center (CMHC) and Dwight Hall, the Community Mental Health Fellowship program enables undergraduates to link with research and community possibilities to offer assistance in public health professional careers and public service. During the 2023–2024 academic year, she worked directly for the City of New Haven Harm Reduction Department and the Street Psychiatry team at CMHC, honing her experience in community mental health.
“The support I received through Dwight Hall helped redefine what I believed was possible for my future,” Emme reflects. “As a first-generation, low-income college student, the ability to be paid to do community work was lifesaving. It redirected the course of my career.” While she had once anticipated applying to medical school after Yale, her experiences opened new doors and new visions for her path forward. “I felt the world’s possibilities kind of open up.”
Nowadays, Emme is a full-time Program Assistant for the Yale Prison Education Initiative (YPEI) at Dwight Hall, previously serving as a Peer Mentor there. At YPEI, she helps to organize college programming in a Connecticut men’s prison so that imprisoned students can be given the guidance and resources necessary to succeed. For instance, she sets up “study halls,” helping to bring life to campus for her students, ranging from extracurricular club meetings to facilitating guest lecturers.
“It’s been a gift and a privilege to work alongside these students,” Emme says.
For other people who are considering careers in public service, Emme says this: “Get to know your neighbors in [your] beautiful city.” Those were her most enduring memories of New Haven, she says, the small conversations she had with residents. “As members of the community… we owe the city this: to care for one another and notice the beauty, richness, and humanness that surround us.”
Emme’s experience at Dwight Hall demonstrates the Grow pillar of the organization’s Engage, Grow, and Advance model, developing students’ intellectual, moral, civic, and creative capacities through fellowships, mentorship, and hands-on service.
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