May 12, 2026
Story by Cary Littlejohn | Show Me Mizzou
Kate Karpinski loves questions.
Right now, her favorite is, “What exactly is public health?”
“I have fallen in love with the field,” Karpinski said. “I love talking about it. I feel like I annoy my friends because it’s all I want to talk about. Now I see it in everything that I do, everywhere that I go.”
The Bentonville, Arkansas, native will serve as the commencement speaker this Saturday, May 16, for the Mizzou College of Health Sciences in Mizzou Arena. She now has her sights set on a master of public health degree and eventually a law degree, after which she’ll dedicate her life to the pursuit of societal questions that sit at the intersection of public health and law.
Begs the question
Karpinski came to Mizzou following a winter tour during which she noticed the warm and welcoming environment. Once she decided on Mizzou, she narrowed down her major after meeting faculty from the College of Health Sciences.
“The faculty in the public health department are extremely passionate and enthusiastic about what they’re teaching, which makes all the difference,” she said. “The program is great because it teaches you to pay attention to what’s happening around you. You start to see patterns in different issues that you are identifying.”
One stand-out professor was Kaleea Lewis. Her persistence forced Karpinski to dig deeper and fully consider her answers.
“She would ask a question, and I would raise my hand, answer the question and think I had done a good job,” Karpinski said. “And then she would come back with, ‘But why?’ Then the whole class is looking at you, and you have to keep going. You have to think about how the world operates. You have to ask yourself, ‘Why actually is this happening?’ Because if you don’t know the cause of the issue, you can’t fix it. That’s the key to good public health policy.”
Karpinski envisions herself working for a federal agency on public health matters one day. That’s why she was especially inspired by her time interning for a health policy nonprofit in Washington, D.C., a position she secured with support from Mizzou’s Kinder Institute for Constitutional Democracy.
“The experience was transformative,” she said.
It wasn’t just the work she was doing that was rewarding; it was the city itself. Because she was seeing public health implications in every facet of life, Karpinski marveled at how elements of D.C., such as mass transit, museums and public housing, represented a solid foundation to a livable, enjoyable community.
For Karpinski, the answers to public health questions lie in the law. She believes the laws that govern public health policy will improve only if more lawyers and policymakers are trained in public health.
Ms. Chief Justice
During her freshman and sophomore years, Karpinski was an academic senator in the Missouri Students Association. She then moved to the judicial branch of the undergraduate student government, serving for two years as the body’s chief justice.
“There’s an intentionality and thoughtfulness that comes with the job,” Karpinski said. “It takes a lot of discipline to think about policies you’re writing and critically think about how they could be applied. I also had to consider how they could be misconstrued in the future. Thinking through how to avoid that is a skill that I really value and will need to use in the future.”
She further cultivated her interest by serving as president of Mizzou’s pre-law chapter of Phi Alpha Delta, the law fraternity focused on mentorship, networking, professional development and community service.
Aligning values and purpose
Before she was selected as one of this year’s recipients of the Mizzou ’39 Award — given to 39 outstanding seniors based on their academic achievement, leadership and service to Mizzou and the community — Karpinski had to answer one more question from Mizzou.
“Which of Mizzou’s core values do you feel like you embody?” she was asked.
Her answer combined everything she’s come to love about not just public health and its intersection with the law but Mizzou itself.
“The core values of Mizzou are exemplified really well in the academics and the extracurricular opportunities offered at this university,” she said. “The one that I identify with the most is responsibility, because I think that public health is about the responsibility that you feel to yourself and your community to make it better for everyone, to have that internal drive to care about other people and their well-being, and to care about how what you’re doing affects others. I feel responsible for how my actions affect other people, and I’m aware of how other people’s actions affect those around us. It’s so beautiful that we’re all connected, and we have to take extra care because we’re all connected.”
No matter the questions she’ll face, Karpinski can rest easy in the knowledge that Mizzou provided her with an eye-opening education that nurtured her greatest strengths: compassion, empathy, responsibility and curiosity.
See all of our graduating student profiles for May 2026.
This story originally appeared on Show Me Mizzou.
Want more stories like this? Subscribe to the Show Me Mizzou newsletter.