Meghan Nagpal (BA ’25) is leveraging her passion for learning and technical expertise to transition into a career bridging medical education and digital literacy.

Harnessing her degree from Brock along with her research background in health policy and big data, she is helping to shape the future of health education as part of the first graduating cohort of Brock’s Bachelor of Adult Education Honours program.

The flexibility and accessibility of the program was a key factor in Nagpal’s success. Offered completely online, the asynchronous program allowed her to combined multiple learning pathways for earning new credentials. All while working full time.

“I always felt supported, even with the virtual format. I am motivated by intrinsic value of learning; the program never felt like work, but rather a passion project” said Nagpal, who graduated Thursday, June 12 during the University’s 117th Convocation.

An engineer by trade, Nagpal was keen to explore other interests creatively combining technology, health care, gender studies and education through independent study and thesis work.

“The ability to customize my learning experience and pursue cross-listed or project-based courses was a major highlight at Brock,” she said.

Nagpal comes from a long line of educators in her family, tracing back to her grandfather who immigrated to Canada from India in 1964 and taught English for 40 years in the rural town of Creston, B.C.

Her mother, aunt and other family members are also passionate educators, reaffirming Nagpal’s desire to grow her own career in the field.

“Rooted in the history and values of my family, I know teaching is more than a practice, it’s a craft worth learning,” she said.

A strong advocate and activist for gender equity and reconciliation, community-based issues surfaced as important to Nagpal both academically and personally while studying at Brock.

The Adult Education program allowed Nagpal to tailor her studies and explore interdisciplinary interests through a minor Women and Gender Studies.

“It was meaningful for me to explore interdisciplinary issues related to equity in the South Asian community, and I appreciated the integration of social justice and reconciliation themes in my coursework,” she said.

Robert McGray, Associate Professor of Educational Studies and Chair of the Adult Education program, said Nagpal is a shining example of someone dedicated to lifelong learning.

“Meghan brought such a strong research background and impressive technical expertise working with large data to the projects she worked on in her degree,” he said.

Nagpal joined a project with McGray and Assistant Professor of Educational Studies Rahul Kumar to complete her honours’ thesis examining global trends of generative artificial intelligence (AI) use.

“Already, as part of that research team, we have been able to begin disseminating the results at two research events with more to come,” McGray said.

Nagpal remains open and exploratory about her future, grounded in both experience and curiosity. She aims to teach in health-care informatics with a focus on how generative AI is transforming medical practice, hoping her research background will help shape future curriculum in the field.

Reflecting on her time at Brock, Nagpal said the Adult Education program can apply to everybody.

“The fact that I was able to apply my engineering background into a final thesis while exploring other interests like gender studies, fitness, gerontology, Indigenous reconciliation all in this in this one program — I think it’s just amazing.”