Every year, the Centre for the Study of the Presidency and Congress (CSPC) hosts its Presidential Fellows program where students are provided the opportunity to learn about policymaking processes and governance.Fellows travel to Washington D.C. in both the fall and spring for conferences where they explore a number of concepts and culminate their learning with a research paper on topics of their interest. The top papers are then published in the CSPC’s annual The Fellows Review.

Uma Kalkar tackling domestic policy issues.

Each year, CSPC sponsors three PCJ students to participate in the Presidential Fellows program. This year’s students were Jonah Toth, Uma Kalkar and James Hannay. While the 2019-2020 cohort were presented with a number of unprecedented challenges this year, our students remained resilient. They performed their research in innovative and developing fields.

Jonah and Uma’s papers each received a coveted spot in The Fellows Review. Jonah’s paper, titled Sovereignty & Health Outcomes in American Indian & Alaskan 125 Native American Communities, tackles the disparities of health outcomes for Indigenous populations. Uma’s work, Digital Fault Lines: An Examination of Internet Inequality in the United States, examines the way digital technologies affect quality of life in urban and rural communities. Beyond being published in the Fellows Review, Uma also received the David M. Abshire Award for the Most Outstanding Paper by an International Fellow.

Jonah Toth (pictured right) with other Fellows.

Having both graduated in June 2020, Uma will be pursuing a dual degree Masters of Public Policy at Sciences Po in Paris and Masters of Global Affairs at the Munk School where she will continue her studies in the way digital technologies affect public policy. Jonah will be pursuing a Masters of Chemical Engineering at McGill University. He also continues to work as Executive Director at passion2action Youth Empowerment, a non-profit he founded in 2016. Jonah plans to develop programming focused on youth projects and reconciliation.