Announcing 2025 Summer Bridge Participants
Five Humanities Ph.D. Students Selected to Support CU Organizations
The Humanities Without Walls (HWW) Summer Bridge Program is a collaborative partnership among HWW; Dr. Olivia Hagedorn, postdoctoral research associate with We CU Community Engaged Scholars; and Dr. Derek Attig, assistant dean for career & professional development in University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's Graduate College. Please join HWW in congratulating the new Summer Bridge participants!
Pictured left to right: Chris Getowicz, Alex Jacobs, Toyosi Morgan, Paapa Nkrumah-Ababio, and Daniel Rodriguez
Chris Getowicz
Getowicz (Education Policy, Organization and Leadership) will be working with Books 2 Prisoners.
Getowicz is a former public school and community educator with experience in public elementary schools and community organizations that serve youth and families in Minneapolis and Chicago. He researches K-12 and higher education, public policy, as well as state and municipal governance. He has worked for the past two years in a variety of roles with the Education Justice Project at the Danville Correctional Center, supporting college-level writing and math, and the delivery of high school programming for a small cohort of students. This has included working with adult tutors supporting students, specifically focusing on teaching practices, pedagogy, and content-area specific curriculum support. As of spring 2025, he has been collaborating with a statewide team to develop curriculum for the Illinois State Board of Education.
Alex Jacobs
Jacobs (History) will be working with the Middle School for Boys.
Jacobs is a first-year Ph.D. student in the history department studying queer history and the British Empire in the nineteenth century. She is interested in queer resistance to empire, how empire responded to and attempted to control queer bodies, people, and communities, and how legacies of empire continue to affect queer people today. She previously worked in housing search advocacy and as a service-learning teaching assistant and team manager. These experiences showed her how the humanities can help us build relationships of trust, respect, and gratitude. They taught her that advocacy through and for the humanities must be uplifting and inclusive of different mediums, voices, and experiences. In the long term, she hopes to use her traditional academic and community-engaged teaching and research backgrounds to advocate for and increase accessibility of queer and other diverse histories.
Toyosi Morgan
Morgan (Theatre) will be working with the Promise Zone.
Morgan studied and taught theatre arts at the University of Lagos, Nigeria. With a background in journalism, she brings awareness of current events to her creative practice. In 2019, she founded Theatre Maniacs, a company focused on Theatre for Social Change, blending real events with African Total Theatre and contemporary global performance practices. Morgan specializes in directing, social justice theatre, documentary theatre, performance studies, and interdisciplinarity. She is a doctoral candidate and graduate teaching assistant in the Department of Theatre at the University of Illinois, with a minor in Women and Gender Studies. She was named a Mellon Foundation Interseminars Fellow with the Humanities Research Institute in 2022–23 and received the 2024 Graduate Student of the Year Ebony Excellence Award from the Bruce D. Nesbitt African American Cultural Center. Her work fosters critical reflection and communal care, as seen in Playing Down Playing Up and I Won’t Mind My Business, which challenges silence around racialized and gender-based violence.
Paapa Nkrumah-Ababio
Nkrumah-Ababio (Education Policy, Organization and Leadership) will be working with DREAAM.
Paapa Nkrumah-Ababio is a Ph.D. student in Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership, concentrating in Global Studies in Education and Evaluation. With a background in Petroleum Engineering and Higher Education, he brings an interdisciplinary lens to his research on culturally relevant education and evaluation in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly Ghana. His work explores how higher education can cultivate innovative, community-rooted problem-solvers to advance sustainable development. Nkrumah-Ababio teaches and applies human-centered design, integrating strong quantitative and evaluation research skills with experience in mixed methods, qualitative inquiry, curriculum development, organizational learning, and strategic communication. He approaches community engagement through an asset-based lens that prioritizes local knowledge, contextual relevance, and community strengths.
Daniel Rodriguez
Rodriguez (History) will be working with the Greater Community AIDS Project.
Rodriguez is a historian, educator, and grassroots activist committed to using his humanities training to serve the community. Currently pursuing a Ph.D. in history at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, his research focuses on twentieth-century U.S. history, with an emphasis on gender and sexuality. His academic expertise includes archival research, oral histories, and community history. Beyond academia, Rodriguez has a strong record of leadership, strategic planning, and coalition building. As co-president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, he successfully led a unionization campaign, secured critical funding for worker initiatives, and forged partnerships with community organizations. A first-generation Mexican American, he is also deeply committed to immigration justice and has mentored ESL youth on their paths to higher education. By working with community organizations, he seeks to apply his research and organizing experience to support local initiatives, amplify marginalized voices, and create inclusive public resources.
Published on June 9, 2025