SC Connecticut News

Nicole Alleyne, a senior at Yale College, has used her academic journey to explore the multifaceted potential of the human body as an instrument for music, a conduit to history, a tool for learning, and a connection to the land. Graduating with a B.A. in American studies and a certificate in education studies, Alleyne has focused on African American history and culture and its contemporary manifestations.

In her senior project, she examined African American spirituals "and how cultural memory lives through the body and through the voice in very intimate ways," as she explained. This connection was something she experienced firsthand as a member of the Yale Gospel Choir.

Alleyne's capstone project for the Education Studies program "reimagined" outdoor education with an emphasis on "connecting Black students to the land." She argued that historical racial violence associated with forests has "ruptured the Black community’s relationship with the land." Consequently, she believes Black students are underrepresented in outdoor education programs.

During her gap year, Alleyne conducted fieldwork for her "land-based pedagogy" project at Camp Fire Wilani Outdoor School in Oregon. There, she led a natural science curriculum for 5th-graders. “Something that is totally missing in traditional education is treating students’ bodies as active parts and interlocutors in their learning experience,” Alleyne noted.

At Yale, Alleyne led excursions for the First-Year Outdoor Orientation Trips (FOOT) program and participated actively as a member of Yale Outdoors.

Hailing from Augusta, Georgia, Alleyne discovered her love for nature during an 8th-grade class trip to Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina. In high school, she co-founded Camp Good Trouble—an outdoor education program inspired by late congressman John Lewis's advice to students: “make good trouble, necessary trouble.”

Through Students Shoulder-to-Shoulder—an organization aiming to inspire ethical leaders worldwide—Alleyne met Karambu Ringera, founder of the Tiriji Foundation. The foundation is currently building a school in Meru, Kenya, with an outdoor education component focusing on “decolonial land.” Alleyne has been invited to assist in this project for a year, funded by Yale’s Charles P. Howland Fellowship.