Left to Right, Dr. Judith Stoddart, (Associate Provost/Associate Dean), Andy Krochalk (TIAA), Sharon Claytor Petters (Former President Michigan Children’s), Subun Nur Cooley, (Ruth Simms Hamilton Merit Fellow), Julie Hanson (TIAA), Dr. Pero Dagbovie, (University Distinguished Professor, Associate Dean,) Doug DiCocco (TIAA)

The Graduate School at Michigan State University is pleased to announce Suban Nur Cooley as the 2019 TIAA Ruth Simms Hamilton Graduate Merit Fellowship. The TIAA Ruth Simms Hamilton Graduate Merit Fellowship was established to honor the legacy of Dr. Ruth Simms Hamilton, a former Michigan State University Professor in the Department of Sociology and a TIAA Trustee who lived from 1937 until 2003. Dr. Hamilton was a professor at MSU for three and a half decades. In fact, she was one of the first African American female tenure-stream faculty member to be hired at MSU in the late 1960s. At MSU, she established an outstanding reputation as a professor and member of the African Studies Center, the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and the Center for Advanced Study of International Development. In the mid-1980s, at MSU she founded the African Diaspora Research Program (ADRP) that served as a movement center for educating and mentoring graduate students in Afro-Diasporic Studies.