A Mission to Educate, With Support From the Foundation Board

Helping first-year College of Education students understand the history surrounding access to, and relationships within, K-12 education can better prepare them to be anti-racist educators.

That’s the belief behind the college’s new Mission Makers Program this year, spearheaded by Amanda Beller, the College of Education’s director of advising, and Robin McWilliams, director of the SAY (Students Advocating for Youth) Village, and funded by a grant from the NC State University Foundation.

The Foundation Board awarded the Mission Makers Program $21,500 this summer, as one of 11 grants for projects and initiatives across NC State.

Mission Makers will use those funds for a series of student travel opportunities this academic year, including a trip to Lumberton and Pembroke, North Carolina, another to Wilmington, North Carolina, and two additional trips to Washington, D.C., and to the National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference in Savannah, Georgia.

Beller and McWilliams interact with all first-year College of Education students through one of two courses, ED 100 and ED 150. The travel opportunities are offered to all of those students, though all may not choose to participate. Those who do attend will amplify their experience by returning and sharing with their peers.

The program’s launch comes on the heels of the events of the past several years, such as the response to the George Floyd killing and other national events that led the College of Education to recommit itself to being an anti-racist college and to preparing its pre-service teachers to be anti-racist in the field, McWilliams said.

Since ED 100 and ED 150 touch every first-year student, Mission Makers provides the chance to broach the topic on the ground floor as students enter the program, ideally providing them with a foundation as they move on into more advanced courses.

“As they move ahead into courses like ED 204, and their major courses, others can take the ball and run with it from there,” McWilliams said.

Trips such as those to Lumberton/Pembroke and Wilmington are new day-trip experiences offered to students this year. The trips to Washington, D.C., and Savannah are existing opportunities for SAY Village students, McWiliams said, but they will expand to welcome non-SAY Village first-year and transfer students.

In Lumberton and Pembroke, students learn about the experiences of the Lumbee Indian tribe, while in Wilmington, they’ll be introduced to the history of the Wilmington race riots. There, in 1898, “a white mob seized the reins of government in the port city and, in so doing, destroyed the local black-owned newspaper office and terrorized the African American community,” according to information from the NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources.

These types of experiences extend classroom learning and the benefits are numerous, including connecting students with new rural and underserved K-12 schools, guiding them to embrace anti-racism as a necessity for educators, and helping them understand the importance of identity-affirming practices, according to the proposal Beller and McWilliams submitted to the NC State University Foundation.

“We want students who want to be in education for the right reasons,” Beller said. “It’s important to have a context of cultural humility, and to understand where other people are coming from. “Travel, being in a new space, and these types of immersive experiences they’ll have in these new places help them really see different people have different experiences.”

The opportunity will help these future educators be better equipped to meet students where they are and help them become the best versions of themselves, she continued.

In Washington, D.C.,visiting the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the National Museum of African American History and Culture provide additional historic context to these future educators, while a visit to the Department of Education provides opportunities for interactive discussion with leaders and teaching fellows.

An added benefit, Beller said, is the opportunity for students who take ED 100 and ED 150 to interact with one another while traveling. The two courses were designed to serve different populations, and the overlap in these trips allows the two groups to engage, creating a greater sense of community.

Those who attend the trips will be asked to come back and present to their peers, McWilliams said.

“We won’t take all students, but if they come back and tell at least one person, then we’ve doubled the number of people impacted,” he said.

2022 NC State University Foundation Grants

The NC State University Foundation solicited grant proposals from colleges and units this year, receiving a total of 21 proposals. Each group submitting a proposal was asked to include a written summary and a short video describing the proposal. This year the foundation funded 11 proposals. The Mission Makers Program was one, and the other 10 include: