UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Lakeysha Graças De Deus, who graduated magna cum laude from Penn State in December with a bachelor’s degree in criminology, legal studies focus, and minors in economics and sociology, has been named the Penn State College of the Liberal Arts' 2024 Schwartz Fellow.
The Schwartz Fellows Program provides a year’s worth of funding — as much as $45,000 — to support a graduating student who plans to engage in a 10- to 12-month postbaccalaureate service activity related to social change, the environment, disaster relief, youth development or other causes. The fellowship is the first of its kind at Penn State and was established in late 2021 by Rhea Schwartz, a 1971 graduate in French and Francophone studies, and her husband, Paul Wolff.
In addition to excelling in the classroom, Graças de Deus served as the programming chair for the African Student Association, and the public relations chair and external president of the Multicultural Undergraduate Law Association at Penn State. She was also a team adviser and currently serves as the program director for the National Student Leadership Conference’s Law and Advocacy Program. This is an experiential pre-college experience that prepares students for life beyond high school and gives them the opportunity to explore law and law-related degrees and professional opportunities.
As a Schwartz Fellow, Graças de Deus will examine and seek to provide a greater understanding of the primary factors contributing to low education levels in impoverished communities in her home country of Angola. She will start preparing this spring and will travel to Angola in July, where she will spend 10 months conducting research with local authorities, teachers and students in six different communities. She will then formulate action projects for each community with the intent of helping those communities address their identified needs.
Additional information about the Schwartz Fellowship, including previous recipients and information about applying for the 2025 fellowship, can be found at https://la.psu.edu/schwartz-fellows.