UT Hosts Young African Leaders
UT Hosts Young African Leaders
Assistant Professor Carolyn Holmes served as the academic head for the summer 2025 visit by Mandela Washington Fellows from 16 African countries.
For the first time in summer 2025, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, participated in the flagship program of the US government’s Young African Leaders Initiative. UT and Tennessee State University collaborated to host 25 members of the Mandela Washington Fellowship program from 16 African countries.
The fellowship is a highly competitive opportunity enabling young civic and business leaders from across Africa to visit the United States for six weeks and engage with the university, community leaders, and politicians.
Fellows attending the Civic Engagement Leadership Institute in 2025 work in fields ranging from civil rights and democratization to conservation and development. They spent four weeks in Knoxville and two in Nashville, and the program was hosted at UT by the Department of Political Science and the Center for Global Engagement (CGE).
“The goal of the fellowship is to equip both US and African civic leaders with the toolkits, expertise, and innovation necessary to promote positive impacts in both the United States and across the continent,” said Assistant Professor Carolyn Holmes from UT’s Department of Political Science, who served as academic head of the program.
Holmes’s research focuses on nationalism and post-conflict transitions to democracy in sub-Saharan Africa. She was the principal investigator on the grant to host the Mandela Washington Fellows at UT. Will Jennings, UT’s associate vice provost of global learning and impact, served as the administrative head of the program. Before joining CGE, he was a member of the political science faculty for more than two decades.
Immersed in Community
“I was in charge of planning and scheduling all of the academic content for the fellowship, including professional development sessions with facilitators from the Haslam School of Business, data and advocacy sessions with members of the political science faculty, history lessons in cooperation with the East Tennessee Historical Society, grant writing sessions with facilitators from ORCA (the Office of Research and Creative Activity), and sessions on UT partnerships with Oak Ridge National Lab, among others,” Holmes said.
University leaders from the Winston College of Law, the Tickle College of Engineering, the Jones Center for Leadership, the Baker School of Public Policy and Public Affairs, the Center for Public Speaking, the UT Institute for Agriculture, and the Division of Access and Engagement assisted in mentoring fellows, hosting them, and facilitating academic content.
Additional mentors came from community organizations in Knoxville, including Girls Inc., Bridge Refugee Services, East Tennessee Freedom Schools, and the Emerald Youth Foundation, as well as the mayor’s office.
While in East Tennessee the fellows experienced major tourism sites such as the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, infrastructure and development projects through Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Tennessee Valley Authority, and sites of cultural heritage and preservation, including the Museum of Appalachia and the Green-McAdoo Cultural Center.
They also volunteered at the Muse Knoxville children’s science museum and Second Harvest Food Bank of East Tennessee.
International Connections Continue
“The wonderful thing about this program is that it allowed us to leverage so much that is great about Knoxville to give our visitors a great cross-section of the United States,” Holmes said. “They were able to experience so much in a short time, and many of them have fostered long-term relationships with people across Knoxville, as well as at the university.”
Two fellows from Zimbabwe and Benin forged strong connections with Girls Inc., and one returned to Knoxville in the fall to speak at a Girls Inc. summit in Knoxville.
Undergraduate political science majors Layla Moore and Miranda Carlton and graduate student Khaled Imran contributed to making the event a success, Holmes said, from completing administrative tasks to leading cultural excursions around Knoxville with the fellows.