KHeystone Projects support Knight-Hennessy scholars in championing causes they care about

Carson Smith was an undergraduate student at Stanford studying political science and Native American studies when she discovered the peacemaking process - a model of conflict resolution that gives tribal communities an alternative to the western, adjudicative court system. With firsthand experience watching loved ones go through difficult conflicts, Smith became involved in bringing this approach to her own tribe, the Choctaw Nation, while also helping others introduce peacemaking to their Indigenous communities. 

Smith became a Knight-Hennessy scholar with the 2022 cohort and began pursuing her JD at Stanford Law School. When she pitched Knight-Hennessy scholars on a passion project last fall, the goal was to further her work in developing culturally competent systems for justice. Through the KHeystone Projects program, Smith formed a multidisciplinary team to explore and develop the Indigenous Peacemaking Project.

One year later, Smith stood before the Knight-Hennessy Scholars (KHS) community at its annual KHeystone Projects Showcase and described how she’d worked with a dozen Stanford students on eight different projects, from researching peacemaking in their own tribal communities to creating works of art. “Having an opportunity to collaborate with a team and then present this work was an exceptionally important and rewarding experience. I was able to explain what’s going on in the tribal space, why I care about it, and why other people should care about it,” Smith recalls. 

Scholar-led collaborations

The Indigenous Peacemaking Project is one of 31 KHeystone Projects that received support from KHS this past academic year to pursue scholar-led collaborations aimed at addressing important regional or global issues. Through this program, scholars work together to explore and develop their ideas, with mentoring offered through KHS. Mentorship is provided by the fellows in the Stanford Distinguished Careers Institute (DCI) and the KHS team. Each approved project receives support for one year, but some continue for multiple academic years, and a select few, such as the Myna Mahila Foundation for women’s agency and a social venture for underrepresented entrepreneurs called Mona, have evolved into for-profit or nonprofit ventures. Other projects take the form of events, podcasts, courses, or other media designed to address urgent problems.

According to Tina Seelig, Executive Director for KHS, KHeystone Projects started as a way for scholars to collaborate across disciplines with one another, each bringing their unique strengths and perspectives. Now in its fourth year, most scholars participate in the program, which has become central to the KHS experience. “KHeystone Projects are about the cross-pollination of ideas. Students join projects not necessarily because they’re experts but because they want to learn about the topic or help address the issue. Often they pick a project outside their area of expertise. It’s exciting to see each scholar’s passion being fed by the energy of the community, and the cross-disciplinary ways they help each other out,” Seelig explains.

KHeystone Projects began in AY 2020-21 with just 13 projects and has expanded each year since, with 31 active projects in AY 2023-24. In the most recent year, there were 15 new projects and 16 continuing projects from the previous year. All cohort years were represented in this past round of projects, from 2018 through 2023.

This year’s projects focused on a wide range of topics, including a tuition-free pipeline for community college graduates to enter careers in mental healthcare, an educational YouTube channel that aims to highlight the works and lives of contemporary artists of color, and a partnership in Kenya to broaden accessibility to scientific research and encourage careers in science.

Read on for snapshots of three notable projects:

OMG-YA KHollective

While Sarina McCabe was working on her undergraduate degree in Creative Writing at Emory University, she wanted to launch an indie literary press to develop new writers. But the initial team she assembled fell apart during the COVID pandemic, and McCabe applied to graduate school instead. Working on her PhD in Modern Thought and Literature at the Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences, she became a Knight-Hennessy scholar in 2022 and met future collaborators Geraldine Mukumbi, a PhD candidate in Curriculum Studies and Teacher Education, and Kay Barrett, a PhD candidate in English. Both scholars are also part of the KHS 2022 cohort. 

Together, the trio conceived of an initiative to rethink the future of publishing for young readers. Their multi-year KHeystone Project, Open Middle Grade + Young Adult (OMG-YA) KHollective, explores how to introduce children to complex scientific topics through engaging literature. “We wanted to combine the best of children’s fantasy fiction with adult-style science fiction that’s grounded in real science,” McCabe says. “The idea is to introduce scientific concepts in literature without turning it into a workbook.”

In the first year of the project, the team focused on creating the fictional world for their story. In the second year, they invited an anthropologist and biologist to join the effort and transitioned into the drafting phase and began writing the manuscript collaboratively. 

“At first, I was nervous about how a humanities-focused idea would be received as a KHeystone Project,” McCabe recalls. “But the reception has been incredible. The KHeystone program is well structured and supports many kinds of projects. Every single teammate is contributing to our project.”

Stanford Housing Equity Project

While Tony Liu (2021 cohort) pursues a PhD in bioengineering, he’s deeply involved in another cause, the Stanford Housing Equity Project (SHEP). This student-led initiative aims to connects the resources of universities to community partners in the Bay Area, working with them to develop programs that advance housing and health equity for individuals experiencing homelessness.

“Our team is deeply motivated to break down the structural and historical barriers between Stanford and community partners working on the housing crisis. We've been working tightly with community partners across the full scope of identifying community needs, building and running programs, evaluating program efficacy, and pushing for policy change,” says Liu.  

The Stanford initiative started as a KHeystone Project and quickly expanded to include participants from across the greater Stanford community. With support from KHS and other organizations, SHEP has made measurable progress in three areas: direct services, research and programming, and advocacy. For example, in the past year, the organization created a course that teaches case management (MED 219 Service Learning), launched a behavioral health intervention for substance use treatment and formed a writing team to work on local policy briefs, among other initiatives.

“The best solutions are going to be community-driven,” says team member Soneida Rodriguez, a life science research professional and Stanford REACH Scholar. “We’re never telling our community partners that we have the solutions. We are approaching this crisis as equals and recognizing them as experts and scholars.”

KH x Paper Airplanes Partnership

Cayanne Chachati (2022 cohort) is pursuing her JD in law and aspires to work at the intersection of international human rights and immigration law with a focus on advocating for refugee laws in the Middle East that align with human rights standards. Meanwhile, she is the coordinator of the Women in Tech Program at Paper Airplanes, a non-profit dedicated to promoting education among conflict-affected individuals. 

Through a KHeystone Project partnership with the non-profit, Knight Hennessy Scholars is contributing in three ways:

• Redesigning the curriculum for the Women in Tech program with a focus on python and business analytic courses
• Developing partnerships with other organizations and within Stanford to recruit mentors and create professional development opportunities
• Structuring curriculum goals and tracking learning objects for the English program

Long-term impact

The KHeystone Projects program has achieved measurable impact in its first four years. Participating scholars have learned to collaborate across fields, they are building relationships across cohorts, and they are helping to motivate and inspire each other to keep going, even when time is limited and setbacks arise. But perhaps the greatest benefit of the program is the chance to practice leadership skills on real life projects with real impact, possibly even carrying those projects beyond graduation. Among other traits, KHS seeks to develop future leaders who are visionary, curious, and open-minded; and whose behaviors are inspiring, creative, and action-oriented – all qualities in action in KHeystone Projects. 

“KHeystone Projects create leadership opportunities in alignment with our KHS Leadership Model of traits, behaviors, and goals that we strive to reinforce in our community,” Seelig says. “This is one of the things we’re most proud of.”

Additional team members on these projects include:

Indigenous Peacemaking Project: Elana Begay (MA Sociology, Stanford) and Brett Lee Shelton (Lecturer at Stanford; Attorney at the Native American Rights Fund) 
OMG-YA: Will Dwyer (2023 cohort), Leona Neftaliem (2023 cohort), and Hannah Melville-Rea (2023 cohort)
Stanford Housing Equity Project: Devon Lee, Nicholas Lui (2021 cohort), Aditya Narayan (2021 cohort), and Margarita Ramirez Silva 

All photos credited to Christine Baker.