2025 Fall Graduating Student Highlights

Nikki Fogle

1. What is Your Name?

Nikki Fogle

2. Graduating Period? (Fall/Spring, Year)

Fall 2025

3. What is your degree, minor, graduate program(s)?

Ph.D.  in Comparative Literature and Intercultural Studies 

4.  Why did you decide to major, minor, or research that subject?

My research is focused on Black identity formation across the diaspora. The Department of Comparative Literature allowed me to compare identity formation in Black Germans and Black French through the literary lens of memoir and autobiography.

5. What are your plans for after graduation and why are those your plans?

After graduation, I am seeking a tenured track position at a college or university.

6. What goals do you have for your career or education after graduating?

One of my primary goals is to be an active contributor to the continued development of African American Studies programs, not only in colleges or universities, but also in civil society. 

7. How did IAAS or the AFAM department support you in your time at UGA and/or in your course of study?

IAAS and the AFAM department provided me with a safe space to engage in meaningful and insightful conversations. 

8. What was your favorite AFAM/IAAS event, program, class, or memory?

I enjoyed all the AFAM courses!! It is too hard to pick my favorite!

9. Any advice for incoming or established students who want to get to know IAAS or take AFAM classes, get a minor, major, or graduate certificate?  Any advice for students in general?

I recommend that every incoming or established student take an AFAM course and consider majoring. AFAM courses are an excellent complement to any course of study.

Rue Tshamala

1. What is your name?

Rue Tshamala

2. Graduating Period? (Fall/Spring, Year)

Fall 2025

3. What is your degree, minor, graduate program(s)?

AB Ecology, informal African American Studies minor (the minor won’t be complete by the time I graduate, but I still feel like it’s still important to mention in my degree program).

4. Why did you decide to major, minor, or research that subject?

I decided to major in AB ecology because I realized I have a really big passion for understanding and addressing how human systems interact with ecological systems. Since my main focus is on Black ecologies and environmental justice, I wanted to minor in African American studies.

5. What are your plans for after graduation and why are those your plans?

I plan to get a master’s in public health at Emory. I feel like my bachelor’s didn’t go into nearly enough depth as I would’ve liked, especially because my interests are so interdisciplinary.  I figured that doing a career focused on health disparities would allow me to pivot away from the environmental focus if necessary, yet also have the skills to work for organizations that do focus on environmental justice if I get the chance.

6. What goals do you have for your career or education after graduating?

I really hope to work with a non-governmental organization that focuses on grassroots work with bases in many fields—namely environmentalism, social work, public health, and geography. In my brain, these fields fit together perfectly, because they all inform each other and can help create infrastructure for a better future for everyone. 

7. How did IAAS or the AFAM department support you in your time at UGA and/or in your course of study?

The institute really helped me remember that I am not alone. Being [immersed in an unfamiliar cultural environment] all day, working so hard to find my POC peers in my small school, and having interdisciplinary interests made it quite hard for me to feel like I was ever doing the right thing. But whenever I’d come to the institute to talk to faculty and peers about my thoughts, I felt affirmed and understood, which helped me stay resilient until the end!

8. What was your favorite AFAM/IAAS event, program, class, or memory?

I loved the potluck in Spring 2025, when we just sat all together and talked about [alternative social and family arrangements]. I feel like I learned so much about everyone that day, and some people’s perspectives really helped me broaden my own understanding of love. 

9. Any advice for incoming or established students who want to get to know IAAS or take AFAM classes, get a minor, major, or graduate certificate?  Any advice for students in general?

To get to know the institute, just start emailing Dr. Medine, Ashaé, and Dr. Couch. They were all so welcoming when I decided to become involved, and all of them did everything they could to help me navigate these academic interests I have. Advice for students in general: please maintain a safe, healthy, happy, and affirming home base. 

 

Adam Jenkins

1. Your Name? 

Adam Jenkins

2. Graduating Period? (Fall/Spring, Year) 

Fall 2025

3. What is your degree, minor, graduate program(s)? 

Interdisciplinary studies, which is composed of three majors, Philosophy, African American Studies, and  International Relations and a focus on pre-law.

4. Why did you decide to major, minor, or research that subject? 

It was the only way to fulfil my intellectual interests. I felt that one single major was not broad enough nor did any one major offer enough depth. I really wanted something interdisciplinary.

 5. What are your plans for after graduation and why are those your plans? 

Law school. For me and my non-traditional approach to academia I have realized how the law intersects with every facet of life.  This is even more efficacious for those with Black bodies, I believe it is important for those in the Black community who are capable to rise to the occasion of overcoming the disparaging statistic, that less than 5% of attorneys in the US are Black.

6. What goals do you have for your career or education after graduating? 

Ideally my plans are to do some work at the ICC in the Netherlands helping to prosecute crimes against humanity but more specifically to research why the US in not apart of the Rome statutes because we need to begin prosecuting racism as a crime against humanity.

Then hopefully I can teach in community college, because community college are the souls of America that is not being attended to, saying this as someone who started in a community college.  Only 10% community college students go off to finish a Bachelors within 10 years. 

7. How did IAAS or the AFAM department support you in your time at UGA and/or in your course of study? 

Life is about people. That has been a fairly static motto that I live by in my youth. The institute embodies this axiom. During times of great tumult in my undergraduate journey I have found a village of support and guidance. Via the medium of altruism, at the institute I found my mentor in Dr. Rafiki Jenkins and I have found life long friends. College is about hard skill acquisition but even more than this, college is about leaving as a better person than you were when you arrived. 

In submission of this premise, the institute reflects everything that I have described. 

8. What was your favorite AFAM/IAAS event, program, class, or memory? 

My favorite class was the independent research with Dr. Jenkins when I took in Spring 2024. Which introduced me to the other classes that I ended up taking for Fall 2025.

 9. Any advice for incoming or established students who want to get to know IAAS or take AFAM classes, get a minor, major, or graduate certificate?  Any advice for students in general? 

Keep an open mind, remain amenable to change, challenge yourself to take things that are new to you. Find community and be intentional about the connections you make with faculty because they want to get to know you and remain curious there is never a bad question. I am non traditional and older student and I found that younger students need this encouragement. 

 10. Anything else? 

The winds do not apologize for how they sway nor do the mountains for how they take up space and neither should you.