On the Record

A biochemistry major, Khaliun Dorjmenchim, C’25, puts in plenty of time in the lab. When she’s not busy exploring challenges in organic chemistry, though, Dorjmenchim can often be found setting up mics and pop filters in a study room in the Van Pelt-Dietrich Library basement, preparing to tape an episode of The FGLI Podcast.

Co-launched by Dorjmenchim and Peter Hong, C’24, in February 2024, the podcast shares the stories of Penn’s FGLI (first-generation, low-income) students and offers practical tips for navigating campus resources, finances, and common FGLI challenges. For Dorjmenchim, creating the podcast has been one more step in her own FGLI journey, a way to give back to her community and broaden her skills.

The Path to Penn

Dorjmenchim was born to Mongolian immigrants and raised in Utah. She grew up in a predominantly white and Mormon community where she managed to assimilate, she says, partly because she used her middle name, Samantha. “I was Sam all the way through school, and I played a lot of sports,” she says. Home life, though, was challenging, with the family living from paycheck to paycheck in what she describes as “a really patriarchal household.”

She found her way to college through the QuestBridge program, which matches high-achieving low-income and first-generation students with full four-year scholarships at partner universities. She discovered chemistry in her first year of high school when she stumbled on an article about nanotechnology and became fascinated with how things on the atomic scale can affect the human body. “I hadn’t even taken a chemistry class at that point,” she says, “but I knew this was what I wanted to learn.”

Her interest in biochemistry emerged when she came across a molecular life sciences program during her first year at Penn. Part of the appeal, Dorjmenchim notes, was that biochemistry has a mandatory research component. “As a first-generation student, I had no idea how research worked or how to get involved in it. So, I thought if I was in a major that required research, it would give me the proper resources to find a lab.”

There’s so much happiness when you find someone else who is FGLI. You can immediately identify with that background. So, with the podcast, we’re saying, ‘Here’s their story, and it might resonate with you, too.’

The strategy worked out well, though she admits that early on imposter syndrome frequently got the upper hand. When everyone introduced themselves in her first-year seminar, all the other students talked about previous research experience, she says. “I remember leaving that class and just being like, ‘I need to go home. This is not for me.’”

Dorjmenchim stayed largely because of experiences on campus outside of STEM. “The major reason I didn’t transfer my freshman year,” she says, “was because Penn offers Mongolian classes and that’s how I fulfilled my foreign language requirement.” It was grounding, she says, to sit down every week and learn more about Mongolia, the country where her parents had come from.

Branching Out

Building a solid friend group within the humanities added to her growing sense of ease. By the time she joined the board of Penn First—the University’s student-run FGLI advocacy group—in her second semester and began actively addressing the needs of other students like her, the feeling that she didn’t belong began to fade away. “I was that freshman at Penn who didn’t have a place,” she says. “And then I found my place.”

Dorjmenchim, a biochem major, the experience also opened up a world beyond STEM.

As Dorjmenchim’s responsibilities with Penn First grew—she became the finance and operations chair in her sophomore year—she realized how much institutional knowledge she and other student leaders held. Chatting with Hong, a fellow Penn First board member, the pair bemoaned how disruptive it can be when a FGLI senior who is active in the community and “knows everything” graduates. A podcast, they reasoned, could preserve that knowledge and help FGLI students feel less alone.

Though Dorjmenchim had never worked on a podcast before, she had few qualms about public speaking and found that the role of host came naturally. Learning how to use the microphones and other recording equipment proved more of a challenge. “We were just students—and STEM students at that,” she says. “There were bumps every step of the way, especially when we were setting up our first episode—we must have taped it three times the audio was so bad—but we knew the only way to learn how to preserve these experiences was to keep on going.”

A dozen students now work on the podcast, taking on the roles of hosting, publicity, outreach, editing, and producing. Their goal is to release a new episode every two weeks during the school year. They’ve released six so far.

The format, with each episode featuring a conversation with one FGLI student or alum, allows for the discussion to cover a lot of ground and also to go deep, says Dorjmenchim. “It’s powerful hearing these stories and having a place where students can get emotional without being in a situation where they’re asking for something, like a grant or a scholarship. The podcast is a place where they can just speak about how their experiences have affected them.”

Though FGLI students don’t necessarily broadcast their status, “there’s so much happiness when you find someone else who is FGLI,” says Dorjmenchim. “You can immediately identify with that background. So, with the podcast, we’re saying, ‘Here’s their story, and it might resonate with you, too.’”

As the podcast becomes more established, Dorjmenchim says she hopes to bring in “bigger” names among Penn’s vast alumni base and to continue the kind of “great conversations” that happen when host and guest already know each other. For Dorjmenchim, the experience has underscored her aspiration to have an impact beyond the lab. “Being a communicator is a huge part of me,” she says, “and I want to keep it going.”