Doctoral Candidate Denisha Campbell has been selected for a Fulbright Award for the academic year 2023-2024.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program provides students in the United States with a chance to work, live with, and learn from the people of a host country. As a recipient, Campbell will travel to Uruguay in March 2024.

“Uruguay was unique within the Fulbright program in that it gave me access to multiple populations in both urban and rural areas,” Campbell explained. Her research, which focuses on language and literacy among children from largely minoritized backgrounds, benefits from sampling different populations to find differences in instruction.

Ultimately, Campbell’s goal is to use her findings to help improve literacy education here in the United States, where she has witnessed severe educational disparities while working in Title I schools in both Chicago and Jacksonville. Across both cities, she saw many students performing far below their expected reading levels.

“Literacy is a key that opens doors,” Campbell said. “I don’t want anybody to be unable to open a certain door because they don’t have that key.”

Campbell’s time in Uruguay will overlap with her expected graduation date in Spring 2024, at which point she plans to continue her career in improving literacy education in the United States.

“Whether that’s in a faculty position or a Department of Education job, I want to be able to address systemic level issues from a systemic approach,” Campbell said. “I want to help push the needle forward.”