Student-Athlete Finds Balance on and off the Ice.
Student-Athlete Finds Balance on and off the Ice
Julia Shaunessy competed for five years as a defender on the BU women’s ice hockey team, scoring a 2025 Hockey East championship title in her final season and, come December, an MPH.
When more than 10,000 fans turned out to watch the Boston University and Northeastern University women’s ice hockey teams face off in the 2024 Women’s Beanpot championship—the first in the Greater Boston-area collegiate tournament’s history to be held at TD Garden—it was by far the largest crowd that Julia Shaunessy (SPH ‘26) had ever played in front of. By comparison, Walter Brown Arena, where the Terriers play their home games, seats just 3,800 people.
While BU came up short in their historic 2024 title match, Shaunessy did not let it discourage her. The 6’1” veteran defender and MPH student is no stranger to maintaining composure and persevering under pressure. She has been balancing performing at a high-level both athletically and academically for over a decade.
A South Shore native, Shaunessy captained her varsity ice hockey, soccer, and lacrosse teams at Tabor Academy in Marion, Massachusetts before following in the footsteps of her parents, Jeanne (CAS’89) and Scott (COM’87), to attend BU and play for the Terriers. During her five years wearing the #20 jersey, she majored in biology, minored in psychology, took prerequisite coursework towards a possible future application to medical school, and enrolled at SPH to study public health.
Shaunessy always knew she wanted to extend her ice hockey career with the Terriers while earning a master’s degree, but she was initially unsure of what to study. Another student-athlete also on a pre-health track recommended SPH’s MPH program. The student, a softball player, told Shaunessy that she found a public health education to be both interesting and helpful to her in her everyday life. After doing a little research herself, Shaunessy quickly decided public health might be a good fit for her, too.
At first, Shaunessy was especially interested in epidemiology, but after taking the four core courses, she discovered a greater affinity for health policy and law. Her Health Systems, Law, and Policy (PH 719) course with Timothy Callaghan, an associate professor in the Department of Health Law, Policy and Management, was her favorite, and she left eager to take another of Callaghan’s classes.
The transition from a more lecture-heavy undergraduate course load to a largely discussion-based graduate course load has required some adjustments, Shaunessy says, but for the most part she feels secure in the skills she has developed over years of juggling multiple class assignments and 20+ hours per week of sports practice.
The degree’s practicum requirement seemed poised to present a potential challenge to the flexibility Shaunessy needed in her schedule to keep up her training, but again, she received a valuable recommendation from a fellow student-athlete. The student, a field hockey player, had completed her practicum the previous summer with Joseph Allen (SPH’08, ’08), a professor of exposure assessment science in the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Shaunessy inquired and Allen invited her to support the launch of a new research study on the effects of the recent wildfires in Los Angeles.
Now in her final semester, just two courses stand between Shaunessy and graduation: Organizing and Advocacy for Health Policy Change (PM851) and Analysis of Current Health Policy Issues (PM840). She is still undecided as to whether she will go on to attend medical school, but Shaunessy says she grateful for the way her MPH degree has opened her eyes to opportunities throughout the greater healthcare ecosystem, and in the meantime, she has enjoyed a celebratory final season with the Terriers.
Shaunessy was repeatedly recognized as a Hockey East top performer, and while BU came up short again after fighting their way back to the Beanpot finals in 2025, they bounced back to win the 2025 Hockey East title. Ultimately, her performance earned her an invitation to join a professional league training camp later this fall.
“It worked out perfectly that I could still be a student, but now, I’ll also be trying out and hopefully playing for this team,” she says. She looks forward to playing in front of even bigger audiences as women’s sports continue to gain traction at the professional level.
