2025-2026 Imagining America / Joy of Giving Something (JGS) Fellows
PRESS RELEASE – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: connect@imaginingamerica.org
Announcing the 2025-2026 Imagining America Joy of Giving Something (JGS) Fellows
Davis, California — Imagining America is proud to announce the cohort of 2025-2026 IA/JGS Fellows. These eight undergraduate students from IA Member campuses were selected for their creative use of art to uplift diverse stories, create connection, and build community.
The goals of the national IA/JGS Fellows Program are to elevate photography and digital media as pathways for undergraduate students to pursue their careers and to make a difference in their communities. The program specifically aims to support students for whom economic and family circumstances render such career pathways particularly challenging.
Fellows receive a $2,000 tuition scholarship, mentorship, and financial support for a community project. They attend the 2025 IA National Gathering (in Las Cruces, New Mexico), participate in regular virtual learning exchanges, and are connected to the consortium’s national network of scholars, artists, and community organizers.
Please join us in celebrating the 2025-2026 IA/JGS Fellows:
Arykah Melton
University of New Mexico
Sophomore, Film and Digital Media
Genevie Hong
University of California, Davis
Junior, Cognitive Science and Sustainable Environmental Design
Helen Mei
University of Richmond
Senior, Rhetoric and Communication Studies; Film Studies
Kendle Weaver
Towson University
Senior, Art and Design with a concentration in Photography
Kenza Aissaoui
University of Pennsylvania
Junior, International Relations; Cinema & Media Studies
Keona Huang
University of California, Merced
Senior, Psychology and Global Arts Studies Program
Kovonna Mcpipe
University of Minnesota
Sophomore, Graphic Design
Loree Keushgerian
Macalester College
Junior, Studio Art and Media and Cultural Studies
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The Imagining America consortium (IA) brings together scholars, artists, designers, humanists, and organizers to imagine, study, and enact a more just and liberatory ‘America’ and world. Working across institutional, disciplinary, and community divides, IA strengthens and promotes public scholarship, cultural organizing, and campus change that inspires collective imagination, knowledge-making, and civic action on pressing public issues. By dreaming and building together in public, IA creates the conditions to shift culture and transform inequitable institutional and societal structures.
The Joy of Giving Something, Inc. (JGS), is a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to the photographic arts and established in 1988 by the late Howard Stein. In 2010, Director of Outreach and Education Wayne Maugans approached IA about expanding support for community-engaged visual arts students as a way to encourage them to pursue post-secondary education and find a life path. Stein saw the visual arts as a potential career for young adults. The IA/JGS Fellows Program is a generous part of Stein’s legacy.
