“What does the United States want to be in the global community? Do we want to be a place that fosters new knowledge and welcomes international thought?” asked Corinne Kentor F’23. “If so, then we really need to think about the relationship between higher education and immigration policy.”
These questions about the complex relationship between higher education and immigration have been at the heart of Corinne Kentor’s work since she began her dissertation in 2019 at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research as a PhD in anthropology and education explored how legal frameworks shape the lives of mixed-status families (families who include people with different citizenship or immigration statuses) in the United States.
Now, she’s putting her humanities doctoral training to work as the Policy and Communications Associate at the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration in Washington, DC, through the ACLS Leading Edge Fellowship Program.
The ACLS Leading Edge Fellowship Program pairs recent PhDs in the humanities and interpretive social sciences with social justice organizations. Made possible by a grant from the Mellon Foundation, these two-year positions demonstrate the potential of humanistic knowledge and methods to address challenges, build capacity, and advance equity in communities across the US.
“I was really excited about the opportunity to be in this interdisciplinary space that valued what humanistic training can bring into policy conversations,” Kentor said. “That was something I was really intrigued by: a fellowship that could get me into new rooms, plus the perfect alignment between my research and the focus of the Presidents’ Alliance.”
I was really excited about the opportunity to be in this interdisciplinary space that valued what humanistic training can bring into policy conversations.
Photo: Presidents’ Alliance staff retreat at the Equal Justice Initiative Legacy Museum in Montgomery, AL
The Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration represents over 550 college and university leaders who are dedicated to increasing public understanding of how immigration policies and practices impact students, campuses, and communities. They advocate for policies that create a welcoming environment for immigrant, undocumented, and international students across the country.
As she heads into the second year of her Leading Edge Fellowship, Kentor reflected that the structed career conversations, reports, and alumni network facilitated by ACLS have helped her define her skills, values, and career priorities. At a recent meeting of Leading Edge Fellows in Chicago, a professionalization exercise gave her a “clear realization” that her highest priority for her work is to solve complex problems in a collaborative setting: “I think that was a light bulb moment for me in understanding why the policy world has been such a good fit, because it really is about solving complex problems in coalition with partners.”
One of the biggest projects that Kentor has worked on at the Presidents’ Alliance is addressing the impact of the systemwide problems with the 2024-25 FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) on mixed status families. The updated application, which is required to apply for Pell Grants, subsidized loans, and other forms of student aid from the federal government, did not allow students to submit the form if their parents did not have a social security number. This caused a major problem for applicants whose parents or guardians are undocumented people and noncitizens. Kentor sprang into action to find solutions in partnership with the government.
“This year, I’ve been working with the Department of Education to identify pain points for students and families navigating the FAFSA process. I’ve been trying to give the Department some insight into why this is happening and to translate what I know from my work with immigrant families up to the policy level by suggesting changes to the FAFSA form itself.”
Diego N. Sánchez, Director of Policy and Strategy at the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, emphasized the reciprocal relationship Kentor has developed with the Department of Education and the capacity she has brought to the organization.
“Corinne has made impressive strides in her first year with us,” Sánchez said. “A standout achievement in our administrative advocacy portfolio is her leadership of the Presidents’ Alliance engagement on mixed-status immigrant families’ experiences with the 2024-2025 FAFSA rollout. This is an area our organization would not have tackled, let alone led, without Corinne’s expertise and initiative.”
This is an area our organization would not have tackled, let alone led, without Corinne’s expertise and initiative. Diego N. Sánchez, Director of Policy and StrategyPresidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration
Most recently, Kentor helped the Presidents’ Alliance launch a new FAFSA resource hub, which includes a guide on how to navigate the FAFSA if your contributor does not have a social security number. She’s currently exploring ways to make sure that the students and families who need these resources can find them, whether that’s through their institutions, or on social media like Reddit or TikTok. While earning her PhD, Kentor refined the skills needed to reach public audiences and convey complicated information in accessible ways.
“In my doctoral work, I thought a lot about how to hone messaging to ensure that my work was relatable, emotive, and could connect with a lot of different audiences,” she said. “I did not want to produce a dissertation, article, or book that was written for scholars alone. It’s not that I don’t want academics to engage with these topics, but ultimately I really wanted every student and family that I worked with in my research to read what I wrote and see themselves in the research.”
In addition to her work on FAFSA, Kentor has helped prepare an expert witness for a senate judiciary committee on Dream legislation and trained undocumented undergraduates visiting DC with TheDream.US on how to conduct conversations with their representations on Capitol Hill. In addition, she’s become the de facto in-house editor at the Presidents’ Alliance—a skill she also contributes to her humanities training.
“Anthropology is a discipline that helps you learn how to consume and integrate a lot of different types of content, and that is still what I do in my work now,” Kentor said. “I will read policy documents and memoranda, I’ll read legal texts, I’ll read all the different ways that people are talking about a topic and then try to synthesize these diverse sources into a clear takeaway. That is a similar skill to what I used all throughout graduate school.”
Conversations with other fellows and alumni at ACLS events have affirmed Kentor’s belief that as higher education continues to change and develop, there does not to be as strict a divide between public-facing positions and those based in the academy. Where some see divergent paths, she sees an opportunity for her scholarship and policy work to inform one another and facilitate new insights.
“I’ve always been interested in how academic positions can contribute to broader policy conversations and how scholars can work in conjunction with community to move ideas and political frameworks forward. That is what I think this fellowship offers the opportunity to do.”
