Rector Kathy Giles welcomes students to Winter Term with encouragement to seek light and hope this season.
June 14, 2023
Inaugural cohort of SPS Omar Brown Fellows carries on the work of the much-loved Humanities teacher.
BY KRISTIN DUISBERG
Known across the St. Paul’s School campus for his warmth, compassion and genuine engagement with students, faculty and staff members alike, Humanities Teacher Omar Brown left a huge hole in the School community when he died unexpectedly in January 2022 after a brief illness. This spring, a group of students began the work of carrying on Brown’s legacy of kindness and inclusion as the inaugural cohort of Omar Brown Fellows. Named in April, these students already have begun to take on a variety of educational and service-learning projects that will continue in the upcoming academic year, working under the guidance of faculty mentors to further the process of building Beloved Community that’s central to SPS and was so important to Brown.
The inaugural group of Omar Brown fellows, selected from a dozen students who applied, includes J. Baffour ’24, Cole Edwards ’24, Amala Jenkins-Culver ’23, Raen Kao ’24, Isa Martinez ’24 and Hudson Stovall ’24. Before the start of Spring Term, a number of these fellows participated in a weeklong Spring Break Service-Learning pilgrimage to historic civil rights sites in Alabama and Georgia with the Rev. Charles Wynder, SPS dean of chapel and spiritual life and Humanities teacher. Several also participated in the Association of Independent Schools of New England (AISNE) High School Students of Color Conference that took place at St. Mark’s School in Massachusetts on April 22.
In the fall, the rising Sixth Form fellows will have the opportunity to participate in a Sixth Form project of their choice that will highlight or advance an aspect of School life that was meaningful to Brown: community engagement, mental health and wellness, spiritual development or diversity and inclusion. These projects may be undertaken as standalone initiatives or might be tied to another community service structure already in place at SPS, such as the Sokoloff Grant program. Omar Brown Fellows also will have opportunities to conduct research, receive training and participate in additional service-learning trips and student leadership conferences during the 2023-24 school year.
Four of the six inaugural Omar Brown Fellows participated in a weeklong Spring Break trip to civil rights sites in Atlanta and Alabama. Pictured with other trip participants are J. Baffour (front), Maya Lokhandwala (second from left), Isa Martinez (in middle, in pink) and Cole Edwards (far right).
Omar Brown Fellow Hudson Stovall (far right) hosted a panel conversation with young Black alumni who discussed their experiences of success in college and their careers.
The idea for the fellowship came out of a series of meetings in the fall of 2022 among a group of students and adults who wanted to honor Brown’s life and his worldview, which was closely aligned with the SPS mission to educate students to build purposeful lives in service to the greater good. Myra Singletary, one of the School’s associate directors of college advising as well as the SPS director of multicultural student support, was among those who were integrally involved in establishing the fellows program. She says that while it was a tall order to envision something that would do justice to the imprint Brown left on the SPS community, the inaugural cohort is a stellar group of curious, kind, service- and social justice-minded students who will carry on the much-loved teacher and adviser’s vision with great purpose.
“We asked ourselves how we could commemorate the life and work of a faculty member who had such a significant impact on our campus, and our solution was to establish a student fellowship in which a group of students who share Omar’s passion for community engagement, mental health and wellness, spirituality and spiritual formation,” Singletary says. “We feel that this is an excellent opportunity for students to be empowered and equipped to become change agents devoted to some of the same causes that were meaningful to Omar.”
