The College of William and Mary recently welcomed eight students to the inaugural class of its new “Social Justice and Diversity Fellows” program.

According to an advertisement for the program on the school’s website, the Fellows will help “fill the gaps in terms of social justice pedagogy” while building “a community of advocates who will pursue social justice in their future careers.”

"Most of what we’ll be doing is trying to fill the gaps in terms of social justice pedagogy."

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Participants will be placed into “research teams under the guidance of faculty or post-doctoral” mentors who will help them “support and promote research in the areas of social justice and diversity.”

Additionally, Fellows will partake in “brown-bag discussions” where they will assess the “marginalization of social justice and diversity research,” as well as how best to support “scholars who are conducting social justice research.”

Notably, each Fellow will receive a stipend funded by the School of Education and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, stemming from a $1 million commitment made in 2017 to “devote additional resources to to increasing diversity on campus.”

Dr. Natoya Haskins, assistant professor and creator of the fellowship, stated in a recent interview that her program is about “developing a network of individuals who look at the world through a lens of equity and justice and want to address these issues in a systemic way.”

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“Most of what we’ll be doing is trying to fill the gaps in terms of social justice pedagogy and at the end of the year, the hope is that they can take their research project and turn it into a manuscript that they can then have published,” she added, noting elsewhere that “this type of research continues to be overlooked or discounted, leaving students feeling isolated and potentially unprepared for future opportunities.”

Haskins told Campus Reform that each Fellow will receive a stipend of $250, but noted that since “this is the inaugural year of the fellowship,” its “current practices will likely evolve over time.”

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