Fatou Diokhane, a graduate student in Urban Education Policy (UEP) at Brown University, was selected as this year's Ruth J. Simmons Policy Scholar. This prestigious award includes a full-tuition scholarship and recognizes the UEP graduate student who best embodies the values of former Brown University president Ruth J. Simmons, particularly in the areas of educational equity and social justice. The Ruth J. Simmons Urban Education Policy Scholarship was established in 2012 by the Annenberg Institute's Board of Overseers and is an annual award.

Fatou spent part of her early childhood in Senegal before moving back to the South Bronx. Her personal experiences with the New York City education system as a multilingual learner, as well as her participation in a college access program, inspired her to study urban education policy. During her time as an undergraduate student at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, she became interested in learning more about U.S. governance and systems of power through the lenses of political science and Africana studies. She says, "The further I got into my undergraduate studies, the more I realized the importance of education as a means of achieving equity in the United States."

Motivated by her desire to better serve her community, Fatou found UEP to be the ideal program for her. "I was attracted to Brown because it was the only graduate program I came across that focuses specifically on urban education systems. I think it's worth thinking about the urban education space and what it looks like for students of color and its implications for equity (or lack thereof) in our public school systems," she says. "Urban cities are also just really exciting; their diversity and complexities have always been an interest of mine."

For Fatou, the most interesting and challenging aspect of urban education policy is learning to incorporate community voices and the lived experiences of students, parents, and teachers into the decision-making process. A UEP course on qualitative research methods has been instrumental in helping her to develop the skills and competencies needed for this important task. 

"The voices of low-income students of color are frequently drowned out of the decision-making process, or decision-making processes are hidden behind closed doors," Fatou explains. "One of the driving forces of education inequity is the lack of centering community voices, specifically from an asset-based lens."

Upon graduating from UEP, Fatou is confident that she will have the necessary tools to be an effective agent of change and to advance educational equity in urban education systems. "Educational equity to me means that every child has access to the teachers, facilities, and resources to excel in the classroom and to feel comfortable in their school environment."

Fatou's internship, an integral part of the UEP experience, is at the Providence Public School District (PPSD) in the Office of Equity and Belonging. As this year's Ruth Simmons Scholar, she also spends time each week supporting programming and research projects at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. 

Outside of the classroom and the Education Department, Fatou has had the opportunity to work within the archives at the John Hay Library, transcribing oral histories from the 1960s and 1970s of participants from the Brown/Tougaloo College exchange program, and assisting with archiving the book collection of the late Afro-Brazilian Studies Professor Anani Dzidzienyo. Although the tasks were challenging, they allowed her to engage with Brown's campus and community in a completely new way and have become one of her favorite aspects of life at Brown.