Meet the Eagles

About Marcella

Hometown: Marcella Muadi Batubenga
Program: Health Systems Management
MSU Role: Current Student

Marcella Muadi Batubenga came to MSU from the Democratic Republic of the Congo 🇨🇩 and quickly found a campus full of warmth and opportunity. Inspired by her First Year Seminar experience, she embraced student life through leadership, campus ministries, and international engagement. Now a health systems management major and peer leader, she’s making the most of her time at MSU—and helping her younger sister do the same. 🌍🩺 

Real Talk:

“I try to get as much knowledge as I can. When you passed that (time in college), you realize it was four years. You either have regrets because you wasted it, or maybe you are proud because you invested in it.”

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Beyond the Bio

A Proud Investment: Marcella’s MSU Story

When Marcella Muadi Batubenga thinks about what she misses most about growing up in her home country in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, it’s the vivid culture of the capital city of Kinshasa and the friendly people that made it special.

“You hear people’s story in the taxi. You are invested as if you know them,” said Batubenga, a sophomore majoring in healthcare management. “You meet anyone anywhere, and you can talk as if you knew each other.”

When Batubenga and her family decided on Morehead State, she said she encountered a similar welcoming atmosphere.

“Everyone I met or kept meeting is just genuinely interested in you,” she said. “We all come, and we find our home away from home.”

After taking a First Year Seminar (FYS) class taught by Jen Timmerman (Class of 2003, 2007), director of transfer services, Batubenga remembers her saying, “You only get out what you put in” as a college student. She took those words to heart and sought out beneficial opportunities for her academic, professional, and personal growth.

Batubenga is part of the Methodist Student Center, the International Student Association, Chi Alpha Campus Ministries, and the Student Alumni Ambassadors (SAA). She also serves as a peer leader at the Tutoring and Learning Center. Batubenga is always looking for opportunities to make a connection or try something new, whether she joins the Ceramics Club, or takes on a position as a resident advisor for the summer Upward Bound program while completing a general education requirement over the summer. She now gets to share her MSU experience as her younger sister, Monica Batubenga, a first-year student majoring in agribusiness.

“I try to get as much knowledge as I can,” she said. “When you passed that (time in college), you realize it was four years. You either have regrets because you wasted it, or maybe you are proud because you invested in it.”

“If in God’s plan it was necessary for me to come here, I believe it was to accomplish great things,” she said. “I’m learning everywhere I go and all the things to do on campus is, I believe, somehow it will somehow help me to accomplish that great thing.”