Each year, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences awards the Dr. Devon T. Wade Mentorship, Service, and Advocacy Award to a master’s or doctoral student for their exceptional commitment to scholarship, teaching and mentorship, and service. Established in 2018, the Award honors the work of the late Dr. Devon T. Wade, whose research as a PhD student in sociology focused on racial and class inequality in educational settings, and the effects of incarceration on families and children. In addition to his scholarship, Dr. Wade was a committed advocate for underrepresented students in the academy. Learn more about Dr. Wade’s accomplishments here.
The 2025 recipient of the Devon T. Wade Award is Umiemah Farrukh (’25MA, South Asian Studies). Drawing from her experiences with “discrimination and lack of access to systemic resources for academic success as a first-generation student,” Farrukh is an advocate for marginalized communities in the US and abroad through her work as a researcher and mentor. She has been recognized through the highly competitive National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates program, and is the co-founder of the Farrukh Foundation, a family-run organization that addresses education inequality. Founded with her siblings, the Foundation is currently building three schools in Pakistan, supporting six boarding houses for orphan girls in Morocco, and providing a scholarship program for community college students in California. Her professor, Joss Lake, wrote that her “high level of engagement across so many areas: advocacy, education, language, literature, and the law,” has demonstrated how Farrukh is “deeply motivated to make a change within her art practice and beyond it.”
As a master’s student in South Asian Studies, she is researching female power in early modern Muslim empires and at work on a historical novel written in English and Urdu. While at Columbia, she co-founded a South Asian Graduate Student Council and initiated a reading program in collaboration with MFA students that connects Muslim and South Asian children with books. This fall, she will pursue a combined JD/PhD, where she will research the creation of systemic protections for the education and intellectual contributions of South Asian, Muslim, and other vulnerable groups. In her acceptance remarks, Farrukh expressed her appreciation for the Wade Award. “I am grateful for opportunities like this one where I can amplify the work of our team at the Farrukh Foundation, connect with like-minded individuals, and where my commitment to pursuing a freer, more equitable tomorrow for the children of the world, from American to Palestine, to Sudan and Pakistan is affirmed.”
Please join Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in congratulating Umiemah Farrukh.
