Chaka Fattah, now serving in his ninth term in the U.S. House of Representatives, represents the Second Congressional District of Pennsylvania. A member of the Appropriations Committee, which oversees over $800 billion in discretionary spending, Congressman Fattah is co-chair of the Congressional Urban Caucus. Fattah—a longtime leader on urban and educational policy—created GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs), which has contributed nearly $2 billion toward the educational advancement of low-income students. Now the largest pre-college awareness program in our nation’s history, GEAR UP has prepared millions of students from America’s inner cities not only to enter college, but to succeed once there. Congressman Fattah founded the Graduate Opportunity Initiative to significantly increase the enrollment of underrepresented graduate students studying science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Fattah also created the Fattah Conference on Higher Education, which over two decades has made over $33 million in scholarships available to put minority students into graduate school. He created CORE Philly, the nation’s first scholarship program designed to provide college scholarships to every high school graduate from a given city. Once named by Time Magazine as one of America’s 50 most promising leaders, Fattah has lived up to that promise, leading the fight to provide quality housing to low-income families, leading the fight to educate low-income students across America, joining the fight to deliver discounted oil to impoverished families, and leading the fight to put the best American leaders in place.
This project is funded by the National Science Foundation, grants # 0822241, 1449550, 1650648, 1743807, and 1813076. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in these materials are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.