Ten years working as a teacher in Los Angeles, London and New York City led to Kathryn Fuller experiencing many realizations, including the limited role \u201csmarts\u201d or intelligence can play in classroom learning.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen kids live in poverty, don\u2019t have family support, or don\u2019t receive the kind of early childhood education needed to effectively prepare them for elementary school and beyond, how are they supposed to ever catch up and succeed like more privileged peers?\u201d said Fuller. Her anger and frustration at the effects of discrimination and other forms of social injustice caused her to take action, and for UConn Neag School of Education students to benefit.<\/p>\n
Using money from her family\u2019s railroad business, Fuller recently presented $150,000 to the Neag School to establish the Fuller Scholarship for Social Justice in Education. The first three $10,000 scholarships from the fund were presented at the start of the fall 2014 semester.<\/p>\n
Like future awardees, the undergraduates chosen to receive the funds showed what Fuller called an eagerness and \u201cspark\u201d to confront inequalities and take part in the kind of long-term conversations needed for significant change to occur.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt 18, you may not yet know exactly how you want to focus your life, but you do have an idea of what\u2019s important to you,\u201d said Fuller, who currently works as a museum educator at the New York Historical Society Museum & Library, as well as creates\u00a0jewelry<\/em>from leather, metal and semi-precious stones as owner of Palomino Jewelry NY. \u201cThe scholarship is for future educators who want to talk about race and discrimination, and who believe, as I do, that we can\u2019t move forward until we confront our past. Real change doesn\u2019t come from a quick fix. It comes from discovering the root of the problem, and then focusing our ideas and energy on ways to make it right.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTeachers also play such an enormously important role in educating young people about the need for social change, and showing their students how we all can all help create a more socially just world,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n According to Neag School Dean Richard Schwab, a gift as large as Fuller\u2019s is always note worthy. But the fact that Fuller is not a UConn alumnus, nor has any ties to the school, makes it especially so.<\/p>\n Simmons College in Boston is where she earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in Philosophy, followed by a master\u2019s in English Education from New York University.<\/p>\n \u201cBut when she was looking for a non-profit, public school of education that shared her vision and belief in the dire need for future teachers to be well-versed in social justice issues, she chose the Neag School,\u201d said Schwab. \u201cAnd for that, we are grateful. We\u2019re also proud she recognized our commitment to eradicating inequalities.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, addressing educational inequalities like poverty and racial discrimination is part of the focus of the Neag School\u2019s \u201cOur Time: UConn\u2019s Path to Excellence\u201d strategic plan. Released this summer, the plan outlines how UConn is uniquely positioned to use its expertise and knowledge base to address state and federal efforts to reinvent public education for the 21st century, which includes addressing the educational inequalities that President Barack Obama calls \u201cthe civil rights issue of our time.\u201d<\/p>\n Fuller said it took just one visit to UConn for its commitment to become clear. \u201cEverything about the Neag School was so impressive. I left there knowing I\u2019d found a school that shared my vision for the need for more social justice in education, plus the willingness and ability to act on what they believed.<\/p>\n \u201cChildren have no control over what families and communities they\u2019re born in to,\u201d Fuller continued. \u201cYet they enter school carrying the burden of their economic situation, as well as having to handle discrimination cased by their religious background or skin color. To stop the ways these children are being discriminated against, we need to get messy. We need to have conversations and seek out lasting solutions. It\u2019s a huge task, but not an impossible one.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n For more information about scholarships like this one, please contact Heather McDonald at hmcdonald@foundation.uconn.edu or (860) 486-4530.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Ten years working as a teacher in Los Angeles, London and New York City led to Kathryn Fuller experiencing many realizations, including the limited role \u201csmarts\u201d or intelligence can play in classroom learning. Using money from her family\u2019s railroad business, Fuller recently presented $150,000 to the Neag School to establish the Fuller Scholarship for Social Justice in Education.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":203169,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1715,1855],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2455],"class_list":["post-203168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-impact","category-neag"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-17 01:56:12","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":203170,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203168\/revisions\/203170"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/203169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203168"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=203168"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=203168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}