Fulbright award alerts were dripping in, and as the Fulbright school consultant at Lehman College in the Bronx, I was glued to the application portal and kept my phone close. I typically see results before the students I advise do, however I try to await them to call me.
As I handled tears of joy and of grief, I recognized that one student, a resilient, ambitious English major who had applied to become a Fulbright fellow, had not connected. A grocery cashier with a jam-packed schedule, she made survival her top priority. She had actually grown up in subsidized real estate and had actually protected her mentor certificate by senior year while handling a full-time class load. The Fulbright experience was something she had time to dream about only on the train after work.
And now she had won a Fulbright to study in Spain.
I was reluctant before disrupting her workday with fortunately. She needed to ask approval to take the call, and she talked to me from a restroom. The tears, disbelief and relief she revealed recognized to me. Winning a Fulbright is amazing, however to numerous first-generation college students, it offers more than excitement: an escape from a location heavy with doubts to a location where they are associated with a brand that showcases their trustworthiness as scholars.
Yet these success are unusual. A lot of first-generation and low-income students are not seen completely by selection committees and miss the chance to become nationally acknowledged scholars.
If award structures truly wish to open doors for students with varied talents, backgrounds and viewpoints, they need to engage gatekeepers who understand, on a visceral level, who these trainees are.
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I was among the lucky first-generation trainees who did win a Fulbright. At 23, I was an honors trainee at Lehman, working overtime while remaining active on school. Yet, before applying for selective awards, I thought twice. It was not a question of whether I felt good enough; when I looked at the portraits of award winners, it was unusual then, and it is still uncommon now, to discover a face that appears like mine.
I worked from 7:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. as a teacher’s assistant at an early childhood center, and nights and weekends as a house supervisor at a transitional real estate program, squeezing in study in between classes and work shifts.
My time, attention and energy were divided, but I yearned for the experiences described in the fellowship applications. There was so much I wished to do for my community, my peers, my household, myself.
Credit: Thanks to the author. In 2003, I was stunned to receive a Jeannette K. Watson Fellowship, which enabled me to intern at the New york city State Supreme Court, the New York City Board Committee on Mental Health and the Commission on Person Rights and Administrative Justice in Accra, Ghana.
In 2004, I got a Ronald E. McNair scholarship and satisfied advisors who were highly achieved and excited to coach the next generation of leaders.
Each award approved me the advantage of time. Rather than fret about spending for every course from my job incomes, I now had the luxury of carrying out research, accepting those unsettled internships, purchasing books, attending conferences and developing professional relationships.
A years earlier, I developed an office at Lehman to support trainees obtaining nationally prominent awards, now called the Campus Honors and Scholar Engagement program. Many of our trainees take care of member of the family. They keep the lights on by working in the gig economy and at base pay tasks.
These students require guides and mentors. They need to assemble their variation of what I called my board of directors– those who motivated me and taught me how to surpass gatekeepers.
I likewise had the defiance of a Caribbean training that chuckles in the face of injustice. Like me, these trainees have ancestors whispering: “There is more, and we will support you.”
I have rested on choice panels for nationally competitive awards like the Gilman, Critical Language Scholarship, Cargill and Fulbright fellowships. I have checked out the application essays and stories of trainees from rural and urban America, and from public and Ivy League organizations.
Frequently, stories that stood apart to me for the complexity of students’ lives were neglected by my committee peers whose relative privilege led them to see institutional brand names as the main marker of intelligence and potential.
While some fellowships, consisting of the Fulbright, concern across the country calls for reviewers, numerous others continue to recruit from among the very same nondiverse organizations, alumni networks and academic circles.
The gatekeepers run the risk of losing out on applicants whose pledge is richer and more complex than connections to top-tier internships, elite schools and high-profile recommenders.
Related: VIEWPOINT: My students satisfy the pledge of higher education every day, but their future is in jeopardy
Expanding customer pools through outreach to organizations serving traditionally underrepresented communities is a vital step in selecting a more comprehensive series of outstanding fellows, consisting of those like my trainee with the grocery store job, whose household’s battles with the English language fueled her desire to teach other English language students.
In Spain, she found herself questioning whatever she learnt about language knowing and discovering brand-new methods to engage and develop meaningful experiences for her trainees in an unknown culture. She returned from her Fulbright bolstered by a new self-assurance: She made a graduate degree in education from Hunter College and now teaches high school English in Brooklyn.
I tell her story to motivate my students. I present them to nationally competitive and well-resourced awards, as well as to those that are lesser known and under-resourced however can be transformative.
I give them a path to publishing and other accomplishments. Most of all, I teach them to love their stories and to share them with care and attention so that they can, and do, stand out.
Alice Augustine is founding director of School Honors and Scholar Engagement at Lehman College and a Paul & Daisy Soros fellow and public voices fellow with The OpEd Job.
Contact the opinion editor at [email protected].
This story about national awards for university student was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization concentrated on inequality and innovation in education. Register for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.
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