Beyond the Yard- Hilltop Highlights

By Kelvin Childs

Fulbright U.S. Student Program awardee Nagea Kirkley (’23, B.A.) said Howard University gave her a wider view of international politics, sharpened her ability to communicate her ideas and put her on the path to fixing the world’s ills.

“Howard taught me how to channel my annoyance and my anger and passion into action,” Kirkley said.

Kirkley is one of two Howard graduates to receive a Fulbright U.S. Student Program award for the 2023–2024 academic year. She is now in Cote D’Ivoire as a Fulbright English teaching assistant, teaching English as a second language to 10 classes with more than 100 students each, as well as private tutoring.

She is compiling a book of poems from people of randomized ages and backgrounds who live in Abidjan. “And I see things that I just don't agree with. Like, I don’t agree with the fact that there’s only one library in the country that’s 85 percent closed,” she said. Accordingly, she launched the Center Educatif Social Library Book Drive, a fundraising campaign to replenish the social education center with a library with books and musical education resources.

As a high-schooler in her hometown of Atlanta, Kirkley was steered to the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Georgia, “so I did not know about HBCUs until my mom told me to apply to at least one HBCU.” But “when I started talking about them to people at my school, they started telling me that I didn't need to go to one, because growing up in Atlanta is basically like going to an HBCU.”

Law was an early interest, and Howard attracted her because of its most famous School of Law alumnus, U.S. Justice Thurgood Marshall. But when it came to campus visits, to New York University and Howard, the experiences were drastically different.

“When I went to NYU, it was nice, but it felt like they were marketing to me. It was very obvious,” Kirkley said. “They had their diversity statistics ready. They had the diversity panel ready. But when I went to Howard, there was no diversity panel with diversity statistics. It was just a lady [Tashni-Ann Dubroy, Howard’s executive vice president and chief operating officer] who went to the podium and started saying ‘Hello’ in all of our languages to us to represent the diversity. So, she didn’t have to tell us that we were diverse. She showed us that we were diverse.”

Once she dug into her studies, an interest in international affairs started blooming, Kirkley said. She pursued double majors in international affairs and community development, with a minor in French.

At Howard, Kirkley was also an Alternative Spring Break team leader and a resident assistant and was on the model United Nations team and the mock trial team. Those experiences taught her writing and negotiation skills, how to communicate clearly, time management, “and stacking responsibilities in order from most important to least important.”

“And then I also learned how to network and genuinely connect with people like professors. I saw that professors wanted the best of me, and they worked in my best interest,” she said.

“I was able to teach myself how to become a student again, not just a person in the classroom who remembers stuff for a test and forgets.”

Kirkley said it is important for alumni to give to the University because those gifts give students the best campus experience. Since she’s graduated, there are renovations and new construction planned for many campus sites “and I can only be happy for the next generation,” she said. “Because I know that even though I had a good time at Howard, because of the donations, that was able to elevate the standard of living and the standard of community there. The next generation will be able to have it even better.”