Faith Applegate is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences majoring in Urban Studies and History with a minor in Urban Education. As a Philadelphia public school graduate committed to education justice, she co-founded Aspiring Educators at Penn, an organization that provides undergraduate students at Penn interested in exploring careers in education with valuable pre-professional resources and support networks. Faith has also served as a student advisor for Penn GSE’s work with the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s “Aspiring to Educate” grant, helping to strengthen the teacher pipeline with a particular focus on recruiting more teachers of color and STEM teachers.
Faith is a Newman Civic Fellow and a Penn IUR Fellow in Urban Leadership. Her other involvements include the Urban Studies Undergraduate Advisory Board, Urban Education Undergraduate Advisory Board, and Sphinx Senior Society. Faith has also been a Social Equity and Community Fellow while at Penn and has spent extensive time working with youth across Philadelphia as a student teacher, running coach, tutor, and mentor. For example, she served as an AmeriCorps VISTA running coach with a local non-profit organization called Students Run Philly Style and spent a year volunteering with an after school gardening club at Andrew Hamilton School. She also gained student teaching experience in a middle school ESL classroom at Folk Arts-Cultural Treasures Charter School, using culturally responsive practices to support student learning.
Through her participation in the SNF Paideia Fellowship, Faith has been able to explore her diverse interests. In 2023, she was part of the Alliance for Understanding Cohort, where she spent six weeks studying the Civil Rights Movement alongside a diverse group of students and faculty. The cohort then took a week-long trip to the American South, visiting museums and historical sites and engaging in dialogue about how to build solidarity across difference in order to create social change. Faith also has used her SNF Paideia dialogue funds to help organize two “Education Dialogue Dinner” events, bringing together students, practitioners, researchers, and other individuals interested in education-related fields together to create an interdisciplinary space for discussing topics related to the field of education.
Faith plans to start her career as a teacher in the School District of Philadelphia. She aims to create an inquiry-based learning environment that cultivates the next generation of civic-minded leaders. She hopes to eventually become a leader in the field of education, promoting educational equity and robust teacher recruitment and retention initiatives.