Despite many efforts to broaden access to good jobs and work-relevant skills, too many low-income youth of color find themselves shut out of career opportunities. Even after developing skills, they may be pushed out of career pathways when educational programs and workplaces are not inclusive. Researchers, educators, and employers are realizing that supportive relationships and career identity are important and often unaddressed dimensions of young people’s career trajectories. This new postdoctoral research fellowship offers an opportunity to better understand these dynamics and tap community assets to intervene in them.
We invite scholars to apply for a two-year postdoctoral fellowship to partner with educators and youth researchers in investigating these topics. Deadline for applications is April 17, 2020.
Empowering Scholarship from Marginalized Communities
We are seeking scholars with deep connections and background with marginalized communities, committed to social justice, with research interests in career equity. Fellows will lead research-practice partnerships, collaborating with organizations serving low-income, Black, and Latinx youth in addressing career equity. Using a youth participatory action research (YPAR) approach, fellows, youth and educators will work together to study the programs, pilot new approaches, create measures of quality and impact, and share what works.
Central to this fellowship is the belief that youth and scholars from marginalized communities are our strongest assets in addressing persistent barriers to career equity. Unlike many postdoctoral positions, this fellowship offers direct funding to a young scholar to lead a project. As leaders of the program team, we will play a supporting role as needed for fellows to develop their project, recruit mentors and partners, find a host institution, and hone research skills.
More details on the program can be found in the call for applications. Background on the research informing the effort can be found on the Equitable Futures website.
Building a Network Connecting Research, Practice & Communities
This fellowship program is being administered by the Connected Learning Lab (CLL) with anchor funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Equitable Futures Project. The CLL will be partnering with a broader network of funders, universities, and organizations in support of this fellowship. As part of the award process, each fellow will be matched with a research institution that fits the fellows’ research interests and goals. In this experimental start-up year, fellows will play a central role in establishing this new network and informing the design of the program.
We expect that the network will grow with the help of our fellows, youth participants, and educational partners. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and CLL will be working to expand partnerships and resources to increase the scope of the research—extending it to new strategies, programs, and ways of creating more inclusive and equitable futures.
