Danielle Maria Allen, a junior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been awarded the distinguished Truman Scholarship, worth $30,000 for graduate studies.
Allen, the daughter of Mia Allen of Monroe, plans to use the award to attend law school. A double major in public policy and economics, she also is earning a minor in urban studies and planning at UNC. She plans to become an attorney for an organization that works to address inequalities in public education.
“Issues of particular interest to me are school assignment plans, the distribution of school funding and provisions for child health-care services,” said Allen. She aims to delve into how law has enabled educational inequality in the past and how it can be a mechanism to eradicate it in the future.
Allen was one of 65 recipients of the Truman nationwide this year, chosen from among 595 applicants who had been nominated by 283 colleges and universities.
She came to Carolina in 2005 on a Morehead Scholarship (renamed the Morehead-Cain in 2007). The four-year merit scholarship is awarded for character, leadership, scholarship and physical vigor. Of 30 Truman Scholars from UNC since the program began in 1977, 17 have been Morehead Scholars.
Congress created the Truman Scholarship Foundation in 1975 as the official federal memorial to the nation’s 33rd president. Truman recipients must be U.S. citizens, have outstanding leadership potential and communication skills and be committed to careers in public service, government, education or the nonprofit sector. Their grade-point averages must be 3.6 or higher.
The foundation chooses recipients who are seen as future change agents, with the desire, intellect and leadership potential to improve how government agencies or nonprofit organizations serve the public. Scholars are required to work in public service for three of the seven years after completing a graduate degree funded by the Truman.
“Danielle knows from her own experience the handicaps that many primary and secondary students suffer because of their socio-economic backgrounds and because of the quality of the public schools they attend,” said George Lensing, Ph.D., director of the Office of Distinguished Scholarships at UNC.
“She has already addressed these issues through her work in such schools,” he said. “Danielle is passionately committed to motivating and directing disadvantaged students to aspire to goals of higher education in their own lives. She seems certain to play a crucial role in opening new opportunities for such students in the decades ahead – both individually and through broader policy changes.”
Allen has researched differences in funding for public education among North Carolina counties and concluded that change at the state level is critical.
“Efforts to close the achievement gap between minority students and white students have been thwarted by inadequate funding to attract and retain quality teachers, furnish basic classroom supplies and cut class size,” she said. “Under a plan that favors suburban and predominantly white districts and ignores the financial needs of rural and some urban areas – where black, Latino and other groups are concentrated – the public education system suggests to minority students that they are not worth educating. Such institutionalized immorality is unacceptable.”
Allen graduated summa cum laude in 2005 from Monroe High School, where she was class president, student body president, editor of the student newspaper and the yearbook, and captain of the varsity cross country and track teams.
The summer after her freshman year at UNC, Allen taught English and poetry writing to socioeconomically disadvantaged children in Austin, Texas – one of four summer enrichment and service experiences provided by her Morehead-Cain Scholarship.
“I realized that the inequality that exists in my community (where she taught) is far-reaching and wholly unjust,” she said. “My kids are just as talented as any other group of students, but because they are poor and attend low-performing schools, their dreams may be crushed even before they have a chance to develop. … Working with them solidified my commitment to pursuing educational reform.”
Between graduation from Carolina next year and law school, Allen plans to work two years with Teach for America. The national organization recruits recent college graduates to teach in underprivileged areas.
Besides the Morehead-Cain, Allen has received a Ron H. Brown Scholarship for commitment to public service, leadership and academic excellence; a Bill and Melinda Gates Millennium Scholarship for scholarship, demonstrated leadership ability and community service; and a National Merit Scholarship. Last summer, Allen’s Morehead-Cain experience took her to Cape Town, South Africa, where she interned with the U.S. Department of Commerce.
On campus, she has been a minority adviser with the Office for Student Academic Counseling; project coordinator for the Chancellor’s Committee for the Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration; and a student representative on both the committee working with Carolina’s reaccreditation process and the advisory board of the Office for Undergraduate Research. An honors program student, Allen has been on the dean’s list all five of her semesters at Carolina.
Allen’s leadership activities at Carolina have included co-directing a Beat Hunger Beat Duke Campaign benefitting the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina. With help from the UNC General Alumni Association, students raised enough money to buy 22,717 pounds of food – more than the Blue Devils contributed.
Web site: http://www.truman.gov/
Office of Distinguished Scholarships contact: George Lensing, (919) 843-7764 or (919) 962-4053, lensing@email.unc.edu
Morehead-Cain Foundation contact: Jennifer Bahus, (919) 962-8589 or (800) 741-9023, jen_bahus@unc.edu
News Services contact: LJ Toler, (919) 962-8589