Carnegie Corporation of New York Awards Grant for "Perspectives on Immigration"

 

The Colin Powell School was recently awarded a two-year grant in the amount of $200,000 from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, in support of our multi-year program: “Perspectives on Immigration.”

For generations, the City College of New York has served as a primary New York institution in the integration of new Americans into the United States.  Over the decades, as waves of new immigrants have undergone demographic shifts, the student population of CCNY has evolved to reflect those shifts.  For the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership, immigration therefore represents both a vital area for research, education and public programming, and a matter of deep and abiding concern to our students. 

The area of immigration research and public policy reform constitutes a key element in our effort to develop a specific identity for the Colin Powell School, as a place with expertise in a range of issues of social, political and economic importance too often under represented in our public discourse. We have faculty pursuing research in areas of disparity, physical and psychological trauma, economic development and social mobility, and the connections between diaspora communities, the world, and U.S. security—each of which plays an important role in this identity.

Immigration justice is particularly relevant to Colin Powell School students, and offers an exceptionally strong opportunity to build out an approach to education and leadership development to areas of student interest and commitment. Many Colin Powell School students, like all City College of New York students, are new Americans, the first in their families to attend college, or members of under-represented and under-served demographic groups. In annual surveys, virtually 80 percent of CCNY student respondents report being born outside the United States, and many grapple every day with being, or being related to, people seeking to make their way into U.S. society. Educating these young men and women, and providing them with leadership training and an orientation toward public service will have a far greater impact if our work focuses on key issues that affect their lives, if the college they attend and the classes they take are more directly engaged in the effort to make real world changes in directions that matter to students.

Finally, we are committed to an engaged mode of scholarship in all its facets: teaching, research and public conversation.  Through the support received from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, we will have, for the first time, dedicated philanthropic support that is specifically designed to bridge students and faculty to the greater public debate on immigration reform, including public event conversations through our “Conversations with City” and “Conversations in Leadership” series, curriculum initiatives such as our intergenerational "Dean’s Pro-Seminar on Immigration” and the continued expansion of our engaged scholarship activities across the departments of the school. We are grateful to the support received from the Carnegie Corporation and look forward to welcoming students, faculty and our Colin Powell School partners to programs over the next 24 months and to sharing our students’ stories with you in future newsletters.

Last Updated: 09/18/2017 15:48