Stanford’s Research, Action, and Impact through Strategic Engagement (RAISE) fellows spend the greater part of three years fostering and building deep connections with communities, both locally and abroad. That work, completed over the course of the three-year fellowship, is supported through tuition, a stipend, and funding to support the partnership of a community-based organization.
As the first of Stanford’s RAISE fellows cohort complete their projects this year, feedback from their community partners is demonstrating the impact and potential of community-focused research.
“RAISE is one of the VPGE programs of which I’m most proud,” said Stacey Bent, vice provost for graduate education and postdoctoral affairs. “In RAISE, Stanford has invested in a new type of fellowship that allows doctoral students to put their scholarship into action by engaging in public service and social impact work, both locally and globally.”
Applications open: RAISE Doctoral Fellowship
Are you a first- or second-year PhD student interested in learning more about being part of the RAISE Doctoral Fellowship? Applications to join RAISE are due April 1.
Here is a look at three recent projects and the community partners who make the work possible:
AI literacy with the Bay Area Writing Project
“AI is changing the way that writing is taught very quickly,” said Chris Mah, a PhD candidate in education, curriculum and teacher education in the Graduate School of Education and third-year RAISE fellow. “It’s raising a lot of questions around what types of writing students will need to know in the future. It’s raising questions around assessment. And it’s raising questions around equity.”
Through RAISE, Mah founded the Bay Area Writing Project (BAWP), a university-schools partnership housed at the University of California, Berkeley School of Education, to explore those questions. In this partnership project, practitioners in emerging research are included in a way that honors their distinct intellectual and professional expertise.
For Mah, access to AI literacy is a matter of equity. His project started as a series of summer institute workshops that helped teachers learn about AI and explore how it might be used for learning in writing classrooms rather than being seen as a cheating tool. At the time, ChatGPT had been available to the public for less than a year, and teachers were just beginning to confront questions about how students were using it.
“What we want to avoid is a situation where less-resourced schools are focused on bans and punishment, while more-resourced schools are investing time and resources to teach students AI skills that will be crucial for their futures,” Mah said. “Instead, we want all students to be able to understand, evaluate, and use AI ethically and effectively.”
Since that first summer institute, Mah and BAWP Director Hillary Walker have presented research and conducted professional development sessions together. Mah has since returned to the summer institute to share new developments in the field and discuss the use of generative AI with a new cohort of teachers.
“The fear messaging was coming through loud and clear,” Walker said. “But I don’t think that teachers had as much practical experience exploring it on their own or seeing it show up in their students’ writing. I would credit Chris with slowing down some of the anxiety.”
A new fellowship approach to African art with Producer Hub
For her RAISE project, Karishma Bhagani, a PhD candidate in theater and performance studies in the School of Humanities and Sciences, is working with Producer Hub, a New York-based nonprofit whose mission is to support independent creative producers, on a proof of concept for the Bridges Fellowship Program for African Producers.
Karishma Bhagani | Alex Gillaspy
It is a fellowship and cultural exchange program in which 10 fellows – five from Nairobi, Kenya, and five from other areas of Africa – will take part in a month-long workshop supplemented by a three-week internship with a program partner focused on addressing the challenges of producing on the continent. The first month-long workshop is scheduled for September 2025, and the fellows will go to a partner organization in Africa, the U.S., or U.K. in 2026.
“There’s no shortage of excellent African art,” Bhagani said. However, there is a lack of producers across various genres – theater, film, festivals alike – whom Bhagani calls “bridge people who are able to translate African content to the global landscape, both from the financial and marketing perspective, but also in terms of contextualizing the multiplicities and diversity of artistic representations of Africa.”
Fellows also develop their own projects, collaborate with a genre-specific mentor from their field, and participate in networking opportunities to meet established African and international producers within their field.
The Bridges Fellowship Program is co-developed between Bhagani and her community partner, Producer Hub, which recently received a $1 million grant from the Mellon Foundation for general funding and to support the fellowship program. It will be a partnership between Producer Hub and the Georgetown University Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics.
“This has been a really exciting opportunity for Producer Hub,” said Michael Francis, producing director of Producer Hub. “It’s kind of a breath of fresh air to be able to dream up a new approach to what a fellowship like this could be.”
Advancing genetics training and development with Tanzania Human Genetics Organization
Tami Gjorgjieva, a PhD candidate in genetics at the School of Medicine and second-year RAISE fellow, collaborates with Tanzania Human Genetics Organization (THGO), a leading advocate for genetics research and education in Tanzania. Their partnership seeks to enhance mentorship opportunities by matching Stanford PhD students and postdoctoral researchers with trainees in Tanzania.
Tami Gjorgjieva | Alex Gillaspy
“It is important to have clinical geneticists, molecular geneticists, genetic counselors, bioinformaticians, and lab scientists – all of these need to come together for human genetics to be part of routine health care,” said Mohamed Zahir Alimohamed, a lecturer in genetics at Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences and co-founder of the Tanzania Human Genetics Organization. “This is currently not the case in Tanzania.”
The mentorship program aims to bridge that gap by leveraging the expertise of both local and international researchers. Utilizing THGO’s existing infrastructure has allowed the delivery of training workshops, including a course with input from local experts on genetics, ethics, and society, co-taught by Stanford students and faculty and local Tanzanian postdocs and faculty experts.
“Let’s say you are a trainee in Tanzania and have genetic data that you’re interested in analyzing, but are unsure where to start. We would match you with a mentor at Stanford who has experience in that area and set up an individualized training program over the course of a few weeks,” Gjorgjieva said.
Beyond individual training, the program is designed as a two-way learning experience. Tanzanian trainees gain technical skills and mentorship while Stanford researchers and students also benefit from understanding genetics in the African context, engaging with the realities of resource-limited settings, and learning from local expertise.
“We’re hoping that the mentees of today’s mentorship program become the mentors of tomorrow in Tanzania,” Gjorgjieva said.
