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Associate Fellow of the Royal Commonwealth Society. President’s Engagement Prize. Four-time Clinton Global Initiative Fellow. Sphinx Society. University Scholar.
When looking at everything Shadrack Frimpong has accomplished during his time at Penn, it’s difficult to believe there was a time when the College senior was wearing tattered clothing in his poverty-stricken village in Ghana, where he almost lost his legs.
Shadrack is from Tarkwa-Breman, one of the most impoverished villages in Ghana. The mentality in the village was “be a farmer or have a family,” he said. Education was secondary.
When he was nine years old, what he refers to as a "miracle" occurred.
He contracted a water-borne infection during a favorite, seemingly innocent pastime in his village — swimming in the river. Medics told him that the only option for removing the life threatening virus was to amputate both of his legs.
However, a resident physician at the city hospital had hope that they could re-diagnose the infection.
For Shadrack, that miracle instilled in him a lifelong belief in "second chances," one he would follow in the work he would later do for others.
RETURNING TO A STARTING POINT
The College senior attended a high school in Ghana for the “needy but brilliant,” with his tuition fully paid, but housing and meals on his own dime. When not accomplishing schoolwork, Shadrack worked on the streets, selling gum and handkerchiefs in order to make ends meet.
When the time came to apply to universities, Shadrack had to take his dire financial situation into account. Though he dreamed of attending medical schools, he knew Ghanian ones would be too expensive. His advisors encouraged him to apply to American universities.
Shadrack spent his first year of college at the historically black Fisk University in Nashville. He recalls sharing historical similarities with his peers, despite not sharing citizenships.
While Shadrack enjoyed Fisk, Nashville and the proximity of Vanderbilt University, he felt that he needed to attend a university that had more opportunities for him, particularly in research. It was then that he decided to transfer and had his pick of a number of elite universities. He chose Penn after many professors responded to his emails about research opportunities and offered to involve him in their work.
Aside from his research, Shadrack also started two non-profit organizations at Penn. The first, Students for a Healthy Africa, assists impoverished communities in Africa. The group built a borehole in Nigeria, opened a clinic and provides health insurance for children with HIV.
The second, African Research Academies for Women, was founded to encourage the involvement of African college women in STEM research.
Next year, Shadrack will continue working for women's empowerment as a winner of the President's Engagement Prize. Using a grant of up to $100,000, he will construct a medical clinic and school for girls in his village in Ghana.
“I’ve been thrilled to be involved with an engaging, intelligent, really, really smart kid,” said professor Harvey Rubin. “He is so enthusiastic. ... He’s thought this project through so carefully," said Rubin, who will be Shadrack's President's Engagement Prize mentor. "I think it’s really remarkable for somebody at his stage being so sophisticated in his approach to the problem of educating young women in his home country, and coupling that with a medical clinic is really fantastic.”
In between his work on the project, Shadrack will fly back to the United States to interview for medical schools.
STANDING OUT
Shadrack has so many people in his life who have witnessed his passion and drive first-hand. If they disagree on anything, it's what they admire most about him.
College seniors Joyce Kim and Ariel Koren met Shadrack through their involvement in the Sphinx Honor Society.
“He is really amazing, in the sense that people like Shadrack should not be at Penn. All the Ghanians at Penn are from really well-off families, but he’s from a really poor village in Ghana," Joyce said. "People like Shadrack at Penn are really rare.”
“There are a lot of passionate, hard-working, inspiring people at Penn, but what makes him unique — he has this unprecedented passion. At a very early age, he knows what his life-calling is," Joyce added. "He has this incredible sense of humility, he doesn’t really self advertise at all. His work truly speaks for himself, he never speaks about himself. He talks about what he’s passionate about, about others.”
Both said they admired Shadrack's passion for learning more about feminism and women's issues.
“The notion that his sister might face many barriers, more than he himself has faced, given that he has faced so many barriers, is something that he’s really had to grapple with,” Ariel said.
Joyce and Ariel attended the Clinton Global Initiative University 2015 conference in Miami with Shadrack. “He was telling us a story," Joyce said, "And he said with such passion: ‘Oh Joyce, I think that the cure to cancer is in the mind of a woman.’”
In spite of his achievements Shadrack's friends, advisors, mentors and professors most frequently described him as "humble."
“He is a very warm and down to earth person,” Shadrack's friend and College sophomore Kwaku Quansah said. “You need to be very close to him to know what he’s accomplished.”
“He is the sort of person who likes to take initiative even when the odds are against him,” Quansah continued. “He started these non-profits with no funding, and it didn’t look promising, but he still found the resources.”
Besides crediting his community to his successes, Shadrack's spirituality sets him apart, according to College senior Sarah Appeadu. Appeadu sang alongside Shadrack in the New Spirit of Penn gospel choir.
“Shadrack really attributes all of his success to God," Appeadu said. "I think that also plays into his different mindset and unique path that he sets for himself which really makes him stand out.”
Shadrack carries his Bible with him everywhere he goes. “I read it and pray before I am about to study. ... It is my relationship with God that has led me this far,” he said.
Shadrack's energy extends to the classroom as well. Professor Larry Gladney, Associate Dean for the Natural Sciences, taught Shadrack in his course Physics 137, where students have the opportunity to teach a physics class in a West Philadelphia high school.
Gladney said that Shadrack took the course seriously but was not afraid to make mistakes. “Everything is fun, everything is an adventure, everything is a place to show energy and try something new. It’s hard to describe the level of enthusiasm he has for everything,” Gladney said. "He’s kind of fearless.”
“Rarely have I met someone who is invested in leading by doing and leads by example,” said Neurology Professor Roy Hamilton, who is another one of Shadrack's mentors. “There is underappreciation for how phenomenal he is.”
Frimpong’s “surrogate mother” at Penn is Dr. Tanya Jung, his College academic advisor. Jung helped Shadrack combine his academic and personal passions by pursuing a double major in biology and health and societies.
She added that Shadrack is unlike other students she has worked with before.
“[He is] a rare individual, a matrix combination of self responsibility, strong work ethic, self reliance and the ability to ask for support when he needs it,” Jung said. “I find it rare in an individual of his age, and it has gone a long way.”
Jung saw Shadrack grow from a sophomore transfer to College senior, making waves throughout the Penn community. She said she has no doubts of his future accomplishments. “I’m fairly confident he will change the face of public health in Ghana, Africa, the world and continue to do that, above and beyond what one would expect from an undergraduate,” Jung said.
She said Shadrack is not the type of person to have grand, abstract dreams and leave it at that. He carefully plans out the concrete steps to accomplish such dreams.
“When I first came to Penn, I was unknown," Shadrack said. “Just do your work and don’t worry about recognition. The goal should not be to be concerned about honors and privileges. ... Make the world better than when we came.”
“Shadrack really attributes all of his success to God. I think that also plays into his different mindset and unique path that he sets for himself which really makes him stand out.”
-Sarah Appeadu, College Senior
