Margeaux Stapleton ’26 felt called toward a career in neonatology from a very early age.
“I have known since I was four years old,” she says. “My parents will tell you that. I don’t know how I even knew what that was.”
Trips to Haiti during middle school and Ghana as a college student helped to further define the purpose of her work. As Wofford’s 2025-26 Presidential International Scholar, Stapleton will immerse herself in even more cultures to understand birthing practices and outcomes.
Each year Wofford’s Presidential International Scholar is chosen by the college’s president as the student with “exceptional potential to benefit humankind as evidenced by a demonstrated passion for service learning combined with a globally minded intellectual curiosity.” The scholarship rewards these students with the funding to carry out independent research in non-traditional locations around the world.
“Stapleton’s project will investigate how different cultures, policies and practices attempt to foster improved birth outcomes, especially in the areas of preterm and special needs births,” says Wofford President Nayef Samhat. “She chose locations for study with thousands of miles between them — the Dominican Republic, Ghana and Thailand or Sri Lanka — and I am excited about her research and eager to learn more as she travels.”
Stapleton credits her parents with fostering her desire to serve and learn internationally. When she was 13, she accompanied her parents on a trip to Haiti. There she saw a vibrant culture, but she also saw children who were suffering from diseases she hadn’t heard of in the United States. Comparing health practices across cultures is an important part of her research.
“My young brain couldn’t fully understand what I was seeing,” Stapleton says. “I was seeing kids who had these diseases that are easily preventable, and I was like, ‘This is where I want to be.’”
Stapleton’s family adopted a daughter from Haiti and brought Stapleton along over the ensuing five or six follow-up trips to the island nation before bringing her new sister to the United States in 2018. Stapleton learned Haitian Creole to communicate with her sister, and she will have a chance to use the language to aid her scholarly research.
“In the Dominican Republic, there are a lot of Haitians who cross the border to get health care,” she says. “It’s going to be really cool to be able to speak directly with some of those patients, as well as speak some Spanish with those who are in the Dominican Republic.”
Two opportunities to study reproductive health in Ghana presented themselves to Stapleton at Wofford through the college’s robust study abroad program. The first came during her first-year Interim during a course called “Culture and Reproductive Health,” offered in conjunction with CIEE. “I had already registered for that Interim before I even stepped foot on campus,” Stapleton admits.
Then she used her connections from that experience to secure an internship at Ga East Municipal Hospital in Accra, where she spent her Interim in 2025.
“I rotated through the natal intensive care unit, which was my favorite place ever. That’s what I want to do in the future,” Stapleton said. “I did general inpatient hospital medicine, which is obviously very different from what we’re used to here. And I also got to observe general and orthopedic surgeries.”
The chance to travel farther than she’s ever been from home is exciting for Stapleton, but she also knows that life-changing work is possible through the Presidential International Scholar experience, and she’s ready to add another chapter in the scholarship’s rich history.
“I’ve been reading back all the way to the first winner and what they wrote about on their trip, just seeing what all the scholars have done in the places that they’ve been,” she says. “I’m really, really thankful.”
Stapleton plans to begin her Presidential International Scholar trip in June and return in late January before the spring 2026 semester begins. She also hopes to share live updates through a blog and an Instagram account focused on her experiences abroad. Stay tuned for more details on those.