Ángel L. Vélez is a Research Associate at the Office of Community College Research and Leadership – University of Illinois.

“The Surge Fellowship creates the space to interrogate and investigate ways to disrupt the education of racially minoritized communities. It is the commitment to raise new questions and actionable steps that makes the Surge Fellowship critical to our collective success. During this pandemic, systemic racial inequalities have been magnified, particularly for our Youth of Color. I hope to engage in questioning and reconsidering my assumptions and genuinely engage in creating community-based solutions to the structural inequalities we continue to face while developing liberatory education for our students of color.”