newsletter Fall 23 - Flipbook - Page 8
Dean’s Award Winners
Undergraduate
Sacramento State/Andrea Price
A
ylaliya Assefa Birru, Sociology,
was the 2023 undergraduate
Dean’s Award* and President’s Medal
of Honor recipient. Each year, the
President’s Medal of Honor is given to
the University’s top graduate and this
year Aylaliya was selected as one of
two recipients. Aylaliya was convicted
in 2015 for felony assault and served
four years in a state prison, facing
possible deportation back to Ethiopia.
She had fled Ethiopia with her mother
and sister when she was 15, settling in
Los Angeles. She returned to Ethiopia
in 2009 when her mother became
Graduate
ill and met and married a U.S. Marine.
Aylaliya says her relationship took a turn
for the worse very quickly after joining
her husband back in California. She
ended up hurting him in an attempt
to defend herself against him, which is
how she ended up in prison. While in the
Folsom Women’s Facility, she enrolled
in Lake Tahoe Community College. She
received an associate’s degree in Social
Sciences and joined Project Rebound, a
program to help incarcerated people get
a college education. After serving four
years, Aylaliya expected to be released
but her green card was revoked and she
was transferred to a U.S. Immigration and
Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention
center, where she was held for more
than a year. She has since appealed an
immigration judge’s deportation order,
and her case is making its way through
the courts. Her petition to Governor Gavin
Newsom for a pardon has been pending
since 2019.
Punished Organization, a volunteer-run
program that campaigns for the abolition
of custodial sentences for victims of
abuse. Aylaliya’s nominator, Patricia
Morris, said “she is one of the most mature,
responsible, and reliable students I have
had in nearly twenty years of teaching
undergraduates” and that she is “simply a
beautiful human being”.
Aylaliya is now a mentor with the Division
of Juvenile Justice, guiding incarcerated
youths to use their time to prepare for
college. She sits on the advisory board of
the New Breath Foundation in Oakland,
which supports Asian American and
Pacific Islander immigrants and refugees
and is involved with Survived and
N
icole Cropper, Public Policy &
Administration, was the 2023
graduate Dean’s Award* recipient. Nicole
is the Deputy Director of Justice, Equity,
Diversity, Inclusion, and Tribal Affairs at
the California Department of Fish and
Wildlife under the Natural Resources
Agency. Previously, Nicole served as
the Special Assistant to the Office of
the Commission at the California Public
Utilities Commission where she led the
implementation of the Environmental and
Social Justice Action Plan and Diversity,
Equity, and Inclusion Working Group
activities. In this role, she coordinated a
variety of policy initiatives that impacted
California’s most vulnerable populations
and marginalized communities.
Previously, she served as the Assistant
Volume 10, Issue 1
Sacramento State/Andrea Price
Sacramento State/Bibiana Ortiz
to Commissioner Rechtschaffen where
she supported his efforts on equity,
transportation electrification, affordability,
environmental and social justice, and
building decarbonization. In a previous
life, she led an organization which
addressed environmental, health, and
food access inequities in marginalized
communities by combining biology and
environmental science curricula with
urban gardening techniques.
*
The Dean’s Award undergraduate and graduate
recipients are also honored with the Mayada
Al-Qazzaz and Sharifa Al-Qazzaz Distinguished
Achievement Awards, respectively, a $1000
award for each, contributed annually by Dr.
Ayad Al-Qazzaz
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