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Student starting early to bring change to education By Jim Carlson
Giani Clarke is a firstyear student in her second semester in Penn State’s College of Education who already has an overflowing resume and plans to match. The future elementary education major someday would like to become a school superintendent. While achieving that goal may be a couple of decades away, she’s already begun to develop those required leadership skills by involving herself in as many academic, social and student government activities as possible. Whatever it might take to effect change, Clarke is all in. She’s a first-year representative in the University Park Undergraduate Association (UPUA), attends Black Caucus meetings, serves on the Student Pennsylvania State Education Association, has a student leadership role with the Multicultural Education Student Association (MESA), and is on the THON dancer relations committee on which she has a diversity/equity/ inclusion (DEI) liaison role. A social justice minor and likely involvement in the D.C. Social Justice Fellowship and Philadelphia Urban Project are on the horizon, she said. An established dancer who also plays piano and violin and performed with her high school orchestra in Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Austria and Croatia, Clarke carried her DEI involvement from Wilson High School in the Reading suburb of West Lawn to Penn State. 10 Penn State Education
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First-year College of Education student Giani Clarke says Penn State is unmatched in terms of opportunities outside of campus that she’ll have available to her.
“Everything regarding critical race theory and all that stuff in the classroom was a big deal and my school board was affected, and I got to see that firsthand because I was their student representative,” Clarke said. “So I got involved in a DEI taskforce and equity taskforce in high school ... just making sure that all student voices are heard and everyone’s included. I think I can represent the community I come from very well and I’d love to learn from other communities that people identify as. So that’s where the passion came from.”
Clarke said she enrolled in the College of Education because nearly all her teachers attended Penn State and her mother, who teaches English as a Second Language, did as well. “So they were obviously huge influences, but once I actually started researching the College of Education, I saw all the opportunities, I saw that I would have a mentor within the college, which was really cool. “And I just think Penn State’s unmatched with the amount of opportunities outside of the actual campus that I’ll be open to just because I’m a Penn State student.”
