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Posted: Saturday, 27 June 2009 8:32AM
UIC graduate student wins $60,000 fellowship
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University of Illinois at Chicago graduate student has received a $60,000 Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship.
Akilah Watkins-Butler, a doctoral student in sociology, is one of 60 students nationwide to receive the award.
Watkins-Butler will study African-American marriage patterns and family formation and its impact on community functioning. As part of her research in a yet-to-be-determined Chicago neighborhood, she will examine key community indicators such as economic health, homeownership, and time residents spend there. She will also conduct interviews with residents, according to a release from the university.
"I'm really interested to find out why African-American marriage rates have been declining, especially over the last 70 years, and what that decline has meant for communities," Watkins-Butler said. "I want to find out how [residents] perceive their community changing, if any, and what they perceive as the effect that marriage has on it."
The Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship will provide $20,000 annual funding for three years, in addition to a $2,000 award to UIC.
Watkins-Butler plans to produce a mini-documentary and a book following her dissertation to bring greater attention to the issue, the release said.
"I hope to capture people's voices and package it in a way that people that work with communities of color can use it as a tool," she said. "I want to devote scholarship in a way that everyday folks can use it and learn."
Watkins-Butler said there is also a personal aspect to the study.
"I live in a world where many of my friends and family members want to get married but aren't able to get married because of a lot of social barriers," she said.
Watkins-Butler earned a master's degree in sociology from UIC in May. She previously earned two master's degrees -- one in business education and another in community economic development -- from Southern New Hampshire University, and a bachelor's degree in community and human services from Empire State College in New York.
A native of Brooklyn, Watkins-Butler is a longtime community organizer and activist with interests focused on helping at-risk children and communities. She formerly served as a program officer with the Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta, where she received a Ford Foundation fellowship in 2005. Along with her husband, Kamau, a doctoral student at the University of Chicago, she co-authored "The Love Ethic
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