On Saturday, Nov. 15, 15 students in five interdisciplinary teams gathered in Kagin Commons for the third annual MacGPT: Generating the Policy of Tomorrow, a full-day public policy hackathon.
The pre-announced theme for this year was public health, and when participants arrived, they were given a more specific theme of accessible and inclusive healthcare to shape their project. Each group examined the issue through the lens of the 17 U.N. Sustainable Development Goals.
When choosing the theme of public health for this year, Maya Mortenson ’26, a member of the planning committee said their team was “thinking about things like how infectious diseases are talked about often, vaccines have become kind of a controversial topic” and the recent cuts to health research.
“We thought it was a really pertinent issue in today’s context, and wanted to give Macalester students the space to explore that further, if they’re passionate about it,” Mortenson said.
The event itself ran from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., but by 5 p.m., teams had their policy brief and presentation ready for a panel of judges made up of Associate History Professor Jess Pearson, Associate Professor of Mathematics Satistics and Computer science Leslie Myint and Catherine Neuschler ’02. Afterwards, teams had a networking dinner and awards ceremony in the Weyerhaeuser Boardroom with alumni and public policy professionals. There were first place and second place awards given, with $500 prizes for both winning teams.
The first place winning team was “Shiz University,” made up of Sophie Segura ’27 and Paula Mbappe ’29. According to their policy brief, their proposal centered around “providing free, accessible treatment to remove heavy metals from the body” through a Community Health Worker model in a rural region in Peru that is polluted by mercury from gold mining.
“Our policy emerged as an attempt to bridge [the healthcare] gap and center health in a context where it is often overlooked,” Mbappe said.
The second place winning team was “#mlmwinzz,” made up of Edgar Orellana Reyes ’26, Reilly Wood ’27 and Brandon Souverain ’27. Their policy proposal was directed at the University of Minnesota Medical School and aims to reduce BIPOC maternal mortality while providing a model for other places in the United States through doulas, who “provide emotional, informational and physical support throughout pregnancy and childbirth [and] they serve as advocates and navigators for birthing individuals,” according to their policy brief.
“Experienced community doulas will be hired [by the University of Minnesota Medical School] as paid adjunct educators who certify teachers/faculty to teach trauma-informed care practices,” the team’s policy brief stated.
“The way my team thought about our proposal was that we really wanted to focus on something that dealt with mitigating racial equity,” Orellana Reyes said. “Two of our team members, myself included, are of color, making this proposal very close to our hearts.”
Catherine Neuschler ’02, who is the Executive Director of the Minnesota Environmental Quality Board which handles environmental impact reviews for projects, emphasized the importance of the hackathon
“[MacGPT] is just such a great opportunity to really think about something in a concrete way, and think about not just sort of what you want to have happen, but what the tools and the pathways and the approaches are that can help you make it happen,” Neuschler said.
