UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Wilson Okello, assistant professor of education (higher education) and research associate in the Center for the Study of Higher Education (CSHE), will be presented with the Early Career Award by the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) at its 48th Annual Conference Nov. 17 in Minneapolis. Okello was recognized for his “focused research agenda on centering Blackness in student/early adult development, has yielded publications that are advancing the field, coupled with translating his research to practitioners.”
“I am because we are and because we are, therefore, I am,” Okello said. “While I am honored to receive the award, the recognition is a celebration of the many Black writers, scholars, thinkers and creatives that my work is built with and stands on.”
Okello, who joined the Penn State College of Education in fall 2022, identifies as an artist and interdisciplinary scholar who draws on Black critical theories to advance research on human development theory. Having received a doctorate in educational leadership with a focus on student affairs in higher education from Miami University (Ohio) in 2018, he said he began to explore Black critical studies while enrolled in the program.
“Exposure to Black knowledge traditions set my trajectory,” Okello said. “I started wondering what it would mean to bring Black knowledge traditions, Black studies into education. My work is really an outgrowth of that curiosity.”
Okello defines his primary research area, Black critical studies in education, as the “belief that Black writers, thinkers and creatives have shared ideas that are useful for how we think about classroom environments, how we think about how students make sense of the world, and how we think about pedagogy.” In a paper published in 2022 in Educational Studies, “‘[Existing] While Black’: Race, Gender, and the Surveillance of Blackness,” Wilson examined how Black people are surveilled in society in a social sense and how that translates to educational spaces. This past summer, Okello was invited by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines for a private, small group discussion focused on the impacts of surveillance from different perspectives. Okello’s comments focused on how the history of racialized surveillance comes to bear on the present and some considerations for the national intelligence community moving forward.
Okello has also pursued research that examines how contributions by Black scholars are received in academia. In April, he gave a talk at Elon University in which he discussed ways “institutions can better support research, thinking, ideation of minoritized folks broadly and Black people particularly in academia.”
In CSHE, one of the nation’s first research centers established specifically to study postsecondary education policy issues, Okello is pioneering a new path in Black studies. He recently launched the Black Studies in Education Lab and is leading a webinar series in which he is “inviting scholars from across the nation to grapple with what it means to center Blackness in educational research.”
Okello infuses his passion for spoken-word poetry in particular into this educational philosophy. He started performing and writing poetry in high school, he said, and found it to be a powerful outlet for self-expression and communicating ideas.
“I was performing spoken-word poetry long before writing journal articles — that was homebase,” he said. “Poetry allowed me to connect with audiences in a particular way that moved people and spoke to people in ways that writing scholarship didn’t do. As an artist, I first understood it as an opportunity to clarify how I was feeling about a particular idea.”
Among the Black authors/creatives that have inspired Okello are writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin, novelist Toni Morrison, and writer and literary critic Ralph Ellison, he said.
Okello has published more than 40 scholarly publications in venues such as the Journal of College Student Development, Race, Ethnicity and Education, and the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education. He is co-editor of “Trauma-informed practice in student affairs: Multidimensional considerations for care, healing, and wellbeing,” a New Directions for Student Services volume (Wiley Press), and author of a forthcoming text with SUNY Press that explores the potential of centering Blackness in student development theory.
Among other early career awards, Okello received the 2022 Council on Ethnic Participation (CEP) Mildred Garcia Award for Exemplary Scholarship by the Association for the Study of Higher Education. He was named a 2022 Emerging Scholar by the American College Personnel Association.