A Boise State graduate student recently had the honor of carrying the Olympic torch in Moscow, Russia.
Kamilla Gazieva, who is pursuing a master of health science degree with an emphasis in health policy, is from Moscow and grew up in the nearby town of Pereslavl Zalessky. She was asked to join the Olympic torch relay because of her affiliation with a Moscow running club.
The torch is being run from Oct. 7-Feb. 7, the day of the Winter Olympics opening ceremonies in Sochi, Russia. It will travel from Moscow to Sochi through 2,900 towns and villages across all 83 regions of Russia.
The torch will take a brief detour Nov. 7-11 to visit the International Space Station. It will be flown to the space station by a special Soyuz mission while the flame itself remains safely rooted to the ground.
Gazieva’s work at the Center for Health Policy (CHP) involves serving as a graduate assistant on a project assessing criminal case disposition as a function of the race/ethnicity of the juvenile offender in three Idaho counties. This project, known in the CHP as the Disproportionate Minority Contact (or DMC) Expansion project, is funded through the Idaho Department of Juvenile Corrections.
Gazieva earned an MBA through Boise State in 2011. For that program, she was sponsored through the Edmund S. Muskie Fellowship program, which is offered to promising students from the former Soviet Union.