L-R: Rina Cummings, Kai de la Cruz, Tesa Wilson, Nazrin Nahar, Lamar Hughes. Not pictured: Noah Garcia.
One of the most special events of the SLU year occurred on Tuesday, June 9th: the reception and award ceremony for winners of the Joseph S. Murphy Scholarship for Diversity in Labor. Awardees, their families and friends, and SLU faculty and staff mingled and celebrated on the 18th floor.
The annual event featured words from all six student awardees, plus remarks by guest speaker Ligia Guallpa, executive director of the Worker’s Justice Project, and 2026 Rising Leader Lisa Ohta, president of UAW Local 2325. Speakers also included Founding Dean Greg Mantsios, former Labor Advisory Board chairman Arthur Cheliotes, and SLU Foundation Interim Chair Kitty Krupat.
Endowed primarily by labor leaders and their families, many of whom attended the reception, the scholarships benefit four Labor Studies MA students and two Labor Studies BA students. The master’s degree students are: Kai de la Cruz, winner of the Albert Neumann Scholarship Award; Lamar Hughes, winner of the Jay and Connie Mazur Endowed Scholarship Award; Nazrin Nahar, winner of the Jay Mazur Memorial Scholarship in Labor Studies, and Noah Garcia, winner of the Arthur Cheliotes Scholarship Award. Garcia could not attend in person, but accepted via video. The bachelor’s degree students are Rina Cummings, winner of the Morton Bahr Scholarship Award, and Tesa Wilson, winner of the Jay Mazur ILGWU Memorial Scholarship Award.
Hailing from a variety of personal and professional backgrounds, the awardees all expressed enthusiasm for their work and studies. Nazrin Nahar connected her experience to that of her scholarship’s namesake, Jay Mazur, the last president of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU).
“Watching the struggles of the garment workers in Bangladesh was my own political awakening around labor issues,” she said. “I was in Bangladesh when the Rana Plaza collapsed, and that really made me think about the role of multinational corporations and the global workers’ struggles in this neocolonial world we live in.
“I really look forward to being in the labor movement with so many of my peers and so many people who are in this room right now. And I’m really thankful for this scholarship,” Nahar said.