The 2024 Class of Paul & Daisy Soros Fellows is made up of 30 outstanding immigrants and children of immigrants from all over the country and world who are pursuing graduate school here in the United States. Selected from more than 2,300 applicants, each of the recipients was chosen for their potential to make significant contributions to the United States.
Eugene Lee, a second year Ph.D. student in the department of Sociology, was born in South Korea and was 15 when he immigrated to the United States. After graduating high school, Eugene wanted to give back to the community that had given him a safe home. He served as a City Year fellow at a local elementary school, where he taught English and math to third graders. Eugene developed a deep passion for education, which prompted him to apply to colleges with the hope of making the US education system more equitable for all students. Despite working three jobs, Eugene made time to write his college essays and put together his applications.
Eugene’s dedication to the college admissions process paid off with a full ride to Amherst College, where Eugene became interested in understanding the social structures that impacted people’s lives. In particular, he wanted to understand how notions of culture, citizenship, and nationhood influenced policies that hindered social mobility for some while benefiting others. Taking an interest in interdisciplinary thought and research methods, Eugene became a quadruple major, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with degrees in American Studies, Education Studies, English, and Sociology, and with an award-winning thesis on the impact of restrictive language policies on immigrant students in the Boston Public School system.
During his time at Amherst, Eugene was a Mellon Mays Fellow, which helps to develop students from underrepresented backgrounds in the humanities. Eugene’s qualitative research study on nontraditional students was published in the Harvard Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, and his insight gained from his participation in the Pedagogical Partnership Program through the Center for Teaching and Learning at Amherst was published by Bryn Mawr College.
Eugene is interested in immigration and education studies. After he completes his training at Cornell, he hopes to become a professor of sociology whose research and teaching will empower students from traditionally marginalized communities and inform policy changes that can increase equity for all.
