Anthony Fowlkes (MPP/MA '19) talks about his experience as a first–generation student of color and his internship at the Center for Minority Serving Institutions in Philadelphia.
Transcript:
So my name is Anthony as I've been
standing up here as we've been dealing
a little bit but I would love to talk
to you about my internship experience I
as a 1st gen student here
a student of color really
find immense value in higher education I
don't think I need to tell this audience
that higher education can do some amazing
things towards economic mobility and
empowering people to really further
their lives in many great areas and so
it may come as a shock to you that over
There's a select few subset that really
work towards furthering students
like myself and our outcomes they're
called minority serving institutions there
are $800.00 of them and I really
thought wow these are really important
institutions because there are certain
people like me and people who don't have
the opportunity to come to a school like
Michigan or who don't even think that they
have the chance to come to a school like
Michigan and so enter the Center for
minority serving institutions it's
a great center it advocates for and
kind of hope redistribute resources
from the University of Pennsylvania
down to many of these other
institutions that really need help and
uplifting their voice and so what I did
was I applied thinking I really want to
help kind of reach out and become a part
of this great network and work for
them not knowing how transformational
this experience would be for
me I wonderfully got accepted
to this internship and
started working with Dr Marybeth Gasman
There she is an incredible person and
I will speak more to that later but
I want to say that over this internship
I got to experience some really cool
things to help uplift and
kind of support their mission I
wrote an article about one of the newest
types of I'm a size which Brock Obama
put into a bill right before he became
president I got to work on this really
interesting research report that focused
on the outcomes that might affect.
These institutions if the house went
through with their proposal for
the higher education
reauthorization bill I got to work
on another really great
Twitter conversation
with policy experts across the nation
talking about the institutions and
these all really came because of my skills
that I was learning in the classroom
learning how to write well learning how to
communicate positions and learning how to
do a lot of really invested research and
in these areas and so.
Well I left the institution knowing that I
probably won't ever return to the center
to work there full time.
I took away a lot about
how to advocate for
those who need help in uplifting their
voices specially in policy Speirs
how to communicate your ideas
when you're trying to work.
On a large issue that can be very vast and
cover many different areas and
then also how to lead Marybeth Gasman was
an amazing leader and taught me how to
selflessly give opportunities and
resources to other people and so
I really hope that I can take
this going forward and imply and
apply this to my work also helping and
encouraging other students
to continue to pursue higher education
in the future thank you thank.
You.