Nina Owolabi
STAR Fellow, SPARK Collaborative Support
Bio
Nina Owolabi, Ph.D., is a mama-scholar who has spent nearly 20 years advocating for youth, college students, and their families. That effort has included student, program, and curriculum development work in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Chicago. She recently completed her doctorate at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she studied education policy, organization, and leadership with a concentration in higher education. While there, she also served as a Senior Research Assistant at the Office of Community College Research and Leadership.
Her research centers on the Black student experience at community colleges. Threads of her research draw on a critical lens to explore the lived experiences of parenting students, interrogating the community college as both a site of access and of enclosure. Nina's journey as an educator, storyteller, mama, and researcher shapes her belief that colleges need to be spaces of radical hospitality, with particular attention to welcoming historically excluded folx through policy and practice.
Bio
Nina Owolabi, Ph.D., is a mama-scholar who has spent nearly 20 years advocating for youth, college students, and their families. That effort has included student, program, and curriculum development work in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Chicago. She recently completed her doctorate at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she studied education policy, organization, and leadership with a concentration in higher education. While there, she also served as a Senior Research Assistant at the Office of Community College Research and Leadership.
Her research centers on the Black student experience at community colleges. Threads of her research draw on a critical lens to explore the lived experiences of parenting students, interrogating the community college as both a site of access and of enclosure. Nina's journey as an educator, storyteller, mama, and researcher shapes her belief that colleges need to be spaces of radical hospitality, with particular attention to welcoming historically excluded folx through policy and practice.