During the fall of 1987, the Graduate College and the Division of Campus Life established awards to recognize outstanding achievement and contributions of graduate students at the University of Arizona who have shown academic achievement despite facing challenging social, economic, or educational obstacles. Beginning in 2018, due to the philanthropic commitment of past Master’s Award recipient, Dr. William Broussard (MA, ‘02, and Ph.D., ‘07—Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of the English Language) six graduate students were awarded the Centennial Awards. Through Dr. Broussard’s continued benevolence, starting in 2022 eight recipients will be selected and awarded the Centennial Award.

 Amable Daiane Custodio Ribeiro

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Amable Daiane Custodio Ribeiro is a doctoral candidate in Second Language Acquisition & Teaching at the University of Arizona, where she also completed a Master of Arts in English as a Second Language in 2019. As a first-generation college student from Parapuã, Brazil, and the proud daughter of rural workers, navigating the educational system has always been a struggle due to limited financial resources and scarce opportunities in her impoverished hometown.

Amable is a multilingual applied linguist with ten years of experience teaching English in Brazil and in the United States. She feels amazed by the cultural and linguistic diversity of our campus and community in Tucson, and by the history of many people who use their education to fight against all types of inequalities. Because of her fascination for language, teaching, and learning, Amable has actively facilitated language learning through her volunteer work with the local immigrant community, and with her international students on campus. These experiences were crucial to solidifying her goal to advocate for struggling non-native learners and teachers of English.

Due to her professional commitment, she was nominated for a teaching award in 2017. She has been fully invested in serving her community by creating opportunities for students, mentoring fellow graduate students, and participating in professional organizations such as the American Association of Applied Linguistics. Furthermore, Amable shows her enthusiasm for learning and career enhancement through conference presentations, invited talks, conducting research, and taking a leadership position as the Vice- President of the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching Student Association.

Her dissertation is focused on the future-oriented identities of English teacher candidates. This reflects her passion for the ideas, beliefs, and conflicting identities that teachers in training develop, and how these factors influence their classroom practices in multilingual contexts. She aims to explore the needs of English teachers and advocate for their professional development, especially international ones who, just like her, want to be heard, valued, and respected.

Katherin Gabriel

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Katherin Gabriel is a doctoral candidate at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, with a major in Medical Pharmacology and a minor in Cellular and Molecular Medicine. She is originally from Colombia, South America, and moved to the United States when she was just a pre-teen. She struggled with the culture and language barrier, but eventually overcame it all and excelled in school.

Katherin obtained her Bachelor’s in Biology from Nevada State College with double minors in Chemistry and Criminal Justice. She obtained grants from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and the National Science Foundation to work as an undergraduate researcher. This is where her passion for pursuing a science career began. As an undergrad, she was very involved with recruiting and mentoring incoming students. She became the President of the Latino Scorpion Club, providing resources, scholarships, and guidance for underrepresented students.

Katherin’s mother was trapped by human traffickers when she was very young, and they were separated for nearly two years. Currently, she is very involved in her mother’s non-profit organization which helps bring awareness to the community about this crime. After graduating, she became a tissue recovery specialist for Nevada Donor Network, where she recovered tissues and organs for transplantation. This experience gave her a deeper understanding of how fragile human life can be. This led her to want to pursue her Doctorate Degree in Pharmacology.

Katherin is currently working in Dr. John Streicher’s lab, understanding key signal transduction cascades involved in pain and opioid receptor signaling; as it pertains to the development of analgesic drugs. She has already lined up a post-doctoral fellowship to continue studying pain in Dallas, Texas. Katherin is passionate about helping people through
scientific discovery, and wishes to be an example of encouragement to young girls who wish to pursue a career in science. She attributes her courage and dedication to her mother, who despite all the hardships she endured, smiles every day and lives life to the fullest.

Eden Kinkaid

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Eden Kinkaid (they/them) is a doctoral student in Geography at the University of Arizona. They are a human geographer with wide-ranging research interests. Eden has ongoing research and writing projects relating to food culture and urban development; philosophies of space; feminist, queer, and trans geographies; and art and geography. They have served as editor for two journals, The Graduate Journal of Food Studies and you are here: the journal of creative geography. Eden has received numerous awards to support their research, including awards from The National Science Foundation, Fulbright Program, Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, as well as a PEO Scholars Award for outstanding academic accomplishments. Eden’s work has been published in top geography journals, including Progress in Human Geography; The Annals of the American Association of Geographers; Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers; Environment and Planning D; Gender, Place, and Culture; Area; GeoHumanities; Geoforum; and The Geographical Review; and has been featured in various books. Their artwork has been published and exhibited in spaces at the intersections of geography, art, and gender studies.

Eden’s contributions to geography and the university extend to their work advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion in academic institutions. As a queer and trans person, Eden has encountered various forms of exclusion in geography, including transphobia and a lack of queer mentorship, peers, and role models. These experiences have led Eden to become an outspoken advocate for DEI and minoritized people in the academy. To actualize these commitments, Eden has sought out training in DEI leadership (e.g., through the UArizona Inclusive Leadership Institute) and served in formal and informal roles to design DEI interventions and facilitate DEI dialogues in their professional spaces. Eden has also pursued and published research that advances DEI in geography, including a study on geography curriculum and its exclusions and various publications and presentations on the status of queer and trans people in the discipline.

After graduating from the University of Arizona in spring 2023, Eden hopes to continue this work and begin their career as a professor in Geography or Gender Studies.

Nikki Rae Tulley

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Nikki Rae Tulley is from Dinétah (the Navajo Nation). Before telling you about how she has excelled in academia, she would like you to know the background and foundation that has developed her into the scientist she is today. Nikki was born and raised on the Navajo Reservation. The Diné people are a matrilineal society. The identity that she carries as a Diné woman comes from the female ancestry through mothers in her family and can be traced back to Asdzą́ą́ Nádleehé (Changing Woman). Nikki's identity in the world is Tódich'ii'nii (Bitter Water).

Prior to western education, Nikki recognizes and honors the “informal” education that she received from the landscapes she calls home, and the teachings of her family. Her grandmothers hold a special place in her journey that has brought her to UArizona as a doctoral candidate. Her parents have given her a remarkable foundation to pursue higher education. The support of Nikki’s sisters, nieces, and nephews also does not go unrecognized in this academic pursuit. In the last stretch of her doctoral journey, Thomas Lincoln Tulley, has entered Nikki’s life to give her the motivation and energy to continue in this work.

Reflecting and expressing gratitude is Nikki’s way to recognize that the work she does is not inspired or accomplished completely on her own. She has stated multiple times that she lives her life in the mentality of Są’áh Naagháí Bik'eh Hózhóó, a core Diné teaching that encompasses living a holistic harmonious life.

Nikki received the 2021 Agnese Nelms Haury Program Tribal Resilience Leadership Award as well as Navajo Nation Council recognition for Selfless Support to the Navajo People. She is an Alfred P. Sloan Scholar and a Tribal Resilience Native Pathways Awardee. She is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Environmental Science. Upon graduation she plans to continue working with BAERI/NASA Ames Research Center to continue to expand Indigenous community capacity in the use of Earth Observations.

2021 Centennial Achievement Doctorate Degree Awardees