Tim Speaks

Once he took his first health care management class, Tim Speaks knew it was the major for him.

Now a senior graduating in May, the Columbia native will head in the fall to graduate school at Emory to continue a project that has captured his passion.

The McNair Scholar started his sophomore year studying how children who grow up in poverty are at high risk of suffering from depression. He would like to continue learning more about this topic to help improve marginalized communities.

Through the McNair program, which helps first generation and low-income students conduct research and find a pathway to graduate school, Speaks made connections for summer work. He spent 10 weeks at Emory University’s AI Data Lab in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2024 where he mapped out high-density poverty areas in Fulton County.

Knowing where low-income communities are located can be used by policy makers, government officials and others to provide help or mental health counseling to children found to be suffering from depression.

“You need to have facts and data to back up what we assume to be true,” Speaks said.

McNair Scholars Program Director Cheryl Fortner said Speaks is a great example of a student who took advantage of McNair support to develop and present high quality research.  “McNair has provided travel support for Tim to present research at national conferences, travel to visit graduate programs, support in preparing graduate admissions and graduate funding applications, and paying fees for graduate applications and tests,” Fortner said.

One of the most important resources for McNair Scholars, she said, is mentoring, which Speaks found in Associate Professor Joanna Jackson and Assistant Professor Larry Stevens.

Getting the Full Experience

Speaks has loved his time at Winthrop and immersed himself in all that he could. He was a walk-on his freshman year on the track and field team. He threw the hammer, shotput and weight throw. On the heels of earning a scholarship his sophomore year, Speaks had his best year, placing second in the weight throw competition at the Big South Conference and making All-Conference.

As one of the upperclassmen on the track and field team, he loves mentoring younger athletes in how to acclimate to college life and manage their time.

His other activities included volunteering as an ambassador with the admissions office, as a peer mentor, a peer coach and as president for the healthcare managers’ association.

His involvement paid off this past November when students voted to crown Speaks as Homecoming royalty during the men’s basketball game.

Looking back on his four years at Winthrop, Speaks said he loved the individual attention he and others received from their business professors. They encouraged him to develop his leadership skills, as well as his marketing, operations management, finance and communications talents. “They were always willing to help us and give us plenty of experiences,” he said.

Once he finishes his master’s degree, Speaks hopes to earn a Ph.D. so he can teach or head up a research laboratory to work with data and health policy that will benefit lower income families and marginalized communities.