2024 Devon T. Wade Mentorship, Service, and Advocacy Award Winner: Garima Raheja

Devon T. Wade was a PhD student at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where he worked to build community and fight for human rights. Informed by his own upbringing in a low-income Houston neighborhood plagued by violence, Wade dedicated himself to researching the understanding of inequality along racial and class lines. His work revealed the collateral consequences that incarceration has on the family—and specifically on children. He also built networks of support for students that historically have been underrepresented in the academy. Devon Wade received multiple awards for his scholarship and activism, including the Harry S. Truman Scholarship, the Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship, and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. He was a founding member of the Columbia University Graduate Students of Color Alliance (SoCA). Columbia’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences awarded Devon T. Wade his doctoral degree posthumously, in recognition of his studies and of the impact he made on others. In 2018, the Devon T. Wade Mentorship, Service, and Advocacy Award was established in his honor. The award is given each year to a GSAS student whose scholarship and leadership continue the work that the late Dr. Wade began.

In May of 2024, Garima Raheja (’22MA, Earth and Environmental Sciences) received the Devon T. Wade Mentorship, Service, and Advocacy award. Raheja, was selected based on her scholarship on climate and air quality, her mentorship of students and communities both within and beyond Columbia and the United States, and her service and advocacy to address environmental justice in the US and globally. Her advisor, Dr. Daniel Westervelt, said that Raheja seemed “to have worked on just about every continent on inhabited Earth,” and that she is in pursuit of “being a well-rounded scholar with expertise not only in hard science but also solutions and impacts.” Dr. Westervelt added that Garima Raheja’s scholarly “productivity has far exceeded expectations,” while she has also managed to participate in–and in some cases lead–community efforts in environmental research and action. These include her work with the American Geophysical Union citizen science initiative, the White House Council on Environmental Quality Internship, and the Department of State Air Quality Fellowships, as well as collaborating with policy polling experts, participating in climate activism exchange programs, and serving on Air Quality advisory boards.  

Having grown up in India in “one of the most polluted cities in the world,” Raheja acknowledges that the “struggle of having to overcome these challenges inspires me to be a strong and vocal advocate for marginalized communities, especially those who are outside of academia.” She has deployed this advocacy through her teaching, mentorship, and service. Raheja has worked on her department’s Race, Climate Change, and Environmental Justice community seminar series; as the Events Chair for the Arts and Sciences Graduate Council; and as a Senior Lead Teaching Fellow with Columbia’s Center for Teaching and Learning. She has also been selected to receive the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Funding Program fellowship.

Please join Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in congratulating Garima Raheja, and wishing her luck as she continues her work.