Corvena Francis Corvena Francis, a senior majoring in psychology at the City College of New York (CCNY), was one of 25 undergraduates in the United States awarded the 2007 Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) Fellowships for Aspiring Teachers of Color.
A native of St. Catherine, Jamaica, who now resides in the Bronx, Ms. Francis is the first City College student to receive the prestigious fellowship and only the second from the City University of New York (CUNY) system since the programme's inception in 1991.
"It was extremely competitive and I'm grateful to God for being selected," said an ecstatic Ms. Francis.
Educating minorities
Fellows were selected for their commitment to education, children and youth, and teaching in the public schools. Each will receive up to $22,100 over a five-year period that begins this summer.
The fellowships also cover full-time graduate study and will end upon completion of three years of public school teaching.
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund invited applicants from a select group of 27 colleges and universities that included Duke, Brown, Howard and Princeton, as well as CCNY.
These schools were chosen for the overall quality of their undergraduate programmes and their commitment to educating minorities and improving teaching in public schools.
Called the 'Harvard of the poor', for 160 years, CCNY has provided low-cost, high-quality education for New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. Over 13,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the School of Architecture, the School of Education, the GroveSchool of Engineering, the Center for Worker Education and the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education.
Ms. Francis, who graduated from Shortwood Teachers' College in Kingston, Jamaica, and taught high school in her home town before entering CCNY, plans a career in public education in the United States after graduate school.
"My goal is to become a principal, and thanks to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellowship, this is something that I should be able to achieve with less expense, in a shorter time span and with greater enthusiasm," she said.
Founded in 1940, the RBF encourages social change that contributes to a more just, sustainable, and peaceful world.
The RBF's grant-making is organised around four themes: democratic practice, sustainable development, peace and security, and human advancement.
As part of the fellowship, Ms. Francis is conducting a summer project at the Children's Storefront, a K-8 institution in Harlem.
At the end of the project, she will give a presentation on her experience at a summer workshop for all the fellows and their mentors from August 2-5 in Washington, D.C.. Her mentor is Dr. Leonard Lewis, director of the CCNY School of Education's learning resource Centre.
Opportunity to be leaders
"My seven-week project is to introduce children at the school to different cultures so that they may be able to understand the people around them and their way of life," she explained.
Miriam Aņeses, director of the Fellowships for Aspiring Teachers of Color programme, said the Manhattan-based Rockefeller Brothers Fund was honoured to play a role in encouraging and assisting students of color to become teachers in the public school system.
"Our fellowships give outstanding students such as these an opportunity to be education leaders," she added.
The Fellowships for Aspiring Teachers of Color initiative is a key component of the Charles E. Culpeper Human Advancement programme.
The fellowship recognises the vitally important role of education in human advancement and seeks to increase the number of highly qualified teachers of colour in K-12 public education in the United States.
Each year the fund awards up to 25 fellowships to students of colour who plan to enter the teaching profession. Since the programme's inception, the RBF has awarded fellowships to 325 students.
- Barbara Nelson
