Fulbright award notifications were pouring in, and as a Fulbright campus advisor at Lehman College in the Bronx, I was glued to the application portal and kept my phone nearby. I often see results before the students I advise, but I try to wait until they contact me.
As I cried with joy and sorrow, I realized that a student, a dynamic and ambitious English student who had applied to become Fulbright my guy, hadn’t reached out. A grocery store cashier with a busy schedule, she made survival her priority. She had grown up in subsidized housing and earned her teaching certificate her senior year while managing a full-time teaching load. The Fulbright experience was something she only had time to dream about on the subway after work.
And now she had won a Fulbright to study in Spain.
I hesitated before interrupting his workday with the good news. She had to ask permission to take the call and she spoke to me from the bathroom. The tears, disbelief and relief she expressed were familiar to me. Winning a Fulbright is exciting, but for many first-generation students, it offers more than excitement: an escape from a place fraught with doubt to a place where they are associated with a brand that highlights their credibility as scholars.
Yet these victories are rare. Too many first-generation and low-income students are not fully considered by selection committees and miss out on the opportunity to become nationally recognized scholars.
If scholarship foundations truly want to open doors to students with diverse talents, backgrounds, and perspectives, they need to hire gatekeepers who know, on a visceral level, who these students are.
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I was one of the lucky first-generation students to win a Fulbright. At age 23, I was an honors student at Lehman, working extra hours while remaining active on campus. However, before applying for selective scholarships, I hesitated. It wasn’t about whether I felt good enough; When I looked at the portraits of the winners, it was rare at the time, and it is still rare today, to find a face that looked like mine.
I worked 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. as a teacher’s aide in an early childhood center, and nights and weekends as a house manager in a transitional housing program, sneaking in between classes and shifts.
My time, attention, and energy were split, but I wanted to have the experiences described in the scholarship applications. I wanted to do so much for my community, my peers, my family and myself.
In 2003, I was shocked to receive a Jeannette K. Watson Scholarshipwhich allowed me to intern at the New York State Supreme Court, the New York City Council Committee on Mental Health, and the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice in Accra, Ghana.
In 2004, I received a Ronald E. McNair scholarship and met with highly accomplished advisors eager to mentor the next generation of leaders.
Each reward has granted me the privilege of time. Rather than worrying about paying for each course with my professional income, I now had the luxury of conducting research, accepting unpaid internships, purchasing books, attending conferences, and building professional relationships.
Ten years ago, I established an office at Lehman to support students applying for nationally prestigious awards, now known as On-Campus Honors and Scholar Engagement Program. Many of our students care for family members. They keep the lights on by working in the gig economy and holding minimum wage jobs.
These students need guides and mentors. They need to bring together their version of what I call my board of directors – those who inspired me and taught me to rise above the gatekeepers.
I also had the challenge of a Caribbean education that laughs in the face of oppression. Like me, these students have ancestors who whisper to them: “There is more, and we will support you.” »
I have served on selection committees for nationally competitive awards such as Gilman, Critical Language Scholarship, Cargill and Fulbright scholarships. I read application essays and stories from students in rural and urban America, as well as public and Ivy League institutions.
Often, stories that stood out to me about the complexity of students’ lives were overlooked by my committee peers whose relative privilege led them to view institutional marks as the primary marker of intelligence and potential.
While some grants, including the Fulbright, issue nationwide calls for reviewers, many others continue to recruit from the same nondiverse institutions, alumni networks, and academic circles.
Gatekeepers risk missing out on candidates whose promises are richer and more complex than connections to top internships, elite schools, and top recommenders.
Related: OPINION: My students fulfill the promise of higher education every day, but their futures are in jeopardy
Expanding the pool of evaluators through outreach to institutions serving historically underrepresented communities is an essential step in selecting a broader range of excellent fellows, including those like my student who works in a grocery store, whose family’s struggles with the English language fueled her desire to teach other English language learners.
In Spain, she found herself questioning everything she knew about language learning and discovering new ways to engage and create meaningful experiences for her students in an unfamiliar culture. She returned from her Fulbright strengthened with new confidence: She earned a graduate degree in education from Hunter College and now teaches high school English in Brooklyn.
I tell his story to encourage my students. I present them with nationally competitive and well-resourced awards, as well as awards that are lesser known and underfunded but can be transformative.
I give them a path to publishing and other achievements. Most importantly, I teach them to love their stories and share them with care and attention so they can stand out and stand out.
Alice Augustine is the founding director of Campus Honors and Scholar Engagement at Lehman College and a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow and Public Voice Fellow with the OpEd Project.
Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.
This story about national student awards was produced by The Hechinger reportan independent, nonprofit news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Register with Hechinger weekly newsletter.
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