MSU PhD student wins GenCen Student Leader Award

April 3, 2023

Angélica Ruvalcaba is the 2023 recipient of the Inspiration Award in the MSU Student Leader Award catagory by the Center for Gender in Global Context (GenCen).

The Student Leader award is given to students who have demonstrated a commitment to advancing equity and improving the lives of women and others impacted by gender-based oppression through community engagement, research/scholarship, leadership development, and/or student activism. 

Angélica is a dual-major doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology and the Chicano/Latino Studies Program with a specialization in Women’s and Gender Studies at Michigan State University (MSU). She is currently working on her dissertation which explores Latina undergraduate student activism on a predominantly white campus in the Midwest.

Angélica received her Master of Arts in Sociology from Michigan State University in 2020. Her thesis, “I can be myself, [almost] always: A Latinx microclimate in a predominantly white institution of higher education,” explores themes of belonging, identity, invalidation, space, and microaggressions through a Critical Race Theory and LatCrit lens. And in 2017, she graduated from Texas A&M University with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and minors in Latino/a and Mexican American Studies and History.

Her research interests include Chicana feminism, Latinx sociology, sociology of education, race/ethnicity, and immigration. Angelica’s current work explores Latina undergraduate students’ experience with activism as a means to challenge racism, sexism, and other systems of oppression at the university and within the Latinx community itself.