2023 Student Scholar Fund Recipients
The Center for Civil Rights and Racial Justice is excited to announce the 2023 awardees for the Student Scholar Fund. The awardees are Sommer Blair, Bianca DeBellis, China McEachron, Amanda Cruce, and Benjamin Blanks.
Read more about the awardees and how they plan to use their awards below!
Sommer C. Blair (University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work)
Sommer Blair, LSW, LMSW, is is a first-year doctoral student at the School of Social Work. She is mentored by Dr. James Huguley and is working with his Parenting While Black Project. Sommer received her master's in social work from the University of South Carolina School of Social Work with a graduate certificate in Drug and Addiction Studies. Sommer earned her bachelor's in history from North Greenville University in Tigerville, SC. Her research focus is identifying the most effective ways for white people to become engaged co-conspirators to people of color.
Sommer will be using her award on a project she designed entitled "What Race Really Looks Like in Our Schools." The project will demonstrate the vastly different racialized, educational experiences of young people within the city of Pittsburgh, allowing voices of the community to be shared and promoting growth in her own journey as a social action-based researcher. The project will visually present the racial juxtaposition of schools in real time and facilitate focus group discussions amongst students in their individualized racial circles of what can be done to improve the racial climate within all school types of Pittsburgh.
Benjamin Blanks (Pitt Law, 2L)
Benjamin Blanks is a native of South Carolina - but calls Pittsburgh home these days. He attended Wake Forest University and is interested in pursuing a career in public interest law.
Blanks will be using his award to complete an internship with the Allegheny County Office of the Public Defender this summer. Having interned previously with the Greenville County Sheriff's Office, Blanks is looking forward to working on the defensive side of the law at his new internship and gaining a deeper and more holistic understanding of the American criminal justice system.
Bianca DeBellis (University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work)
Bianca R. De Bellis, LMSW, M.Ed is a doctoral student at the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work. She began her career working as a Special Education teacher for the New York City Department of Education through AmeriCorps. She later transitioned to a social work role where she provided student counseling and worked on a multi-disciplinary team to support students holistically through social-emotional interventions and restorative practices.
DeBellis will use this award to fund her dissertation research. This year, she co-designed a trauma intervention within the traditional restorative school model that is currently being piloted in seven Pittsburgh elementary and middle schools titled DREAMs (Developing Rational, Emotional, and Adaptive Minds).
Amanda Cruce (University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work, School of Public Health)
Amanda Cruce is a dual degree student at the University of Pittsburgh, pursuing a Masters in Public Health and PhD in Social Work. She holds an MSW from the University of Texas at Arlington and a BA in international studies from Austin College in Texas. Prior to returning to school, Cruce was a foster parent in Florida and worked to enhance the child welfare system, improving the culture surrounding LGBTQ+ youth, normalcy, foster parent engagement, birth parent involvement, and teen voices.
Cruce will use her award to support a qualitative study with LGBTQ+ young adults that spent time in foster care, focusing especially on African American youth. In this qualitative study, questions will be focused on their time in care, relationship with their placements, experiences of participating in normal developmental activities and comparisons to their cisgendered heterosexual peers. Cruce is currently completing research on flourishing and young adults that spent time in care. Some of that information will be used to complement this qualitative data.
China McEachron (Pitt Law, 2L)
China McEachron (JD '24) received her B.A. in Strategic Communication from Temple University. McEachron is involved in the Black Law Students Association (BLSA) and Christian Legal Society. She was a Marshall-Brennan Teaching Fellow, working with Pittsburgh high school students to prepare them for moot court oral argument on first and fourth amendment rights. McEachron is passionate about issues relating to education equity, school discipline reform, and youth advocacy, and is excited to work with CCRRJ on its education programming.
McEachron will use her award to intern with the Education Law Center this summer. The Center's most recent advocacy includes suing the Pennsylvania Department of Education, on behalf of various school districts and parent advocacy organizations, alleging that the current system of funding Pennsylvania public schools was unconstitutional. A Commonwealth court judge agreed with them, which has been a historic victory for Pennsylvania students and parents. This summer, McEachron will work alongside ELC attorneys, developing policy recommendations for a new school funding scheme.