Featured Alumni: Jessica Samuels
Three-time Alum Dedicates Her Life to Changing Lives
Jessica Samuels, Ph.D., is a three-time alum of University of Idaho. Her first steps on campus were as a pre-college Upward Bound TRIO student. Unfortunately, after she graduated from Orofino High School, it took her ten years to return to U of I and start her undergraduate education. With the support and assistance of the College Assistance Migrant Program (CAMP), Samuels was able to gain access to U of I and begin her higher education journey in 2004.
As a first-generation, nontraditional, undergraduate student, Samuels was involved and participated in CAMP, Student Support Services (SSS-TRIO), McNair TRIO, the Native American Student Center and the Office of Multicultural Affairs. From the start, her involvement and participation on campus led her to be recognized as one of the 2004-2005 Outstanding Freshmen of the Year. During her undergraduate years, she helped reestablish U of I's Black Student Union (BSU), where she held leadership roles like secretary and president. With the BSU, she began the Soul Food Sunday tradition and even helped coordinate community-wide soul food potlucks with the Latah County Human Rights Taskforce. As an undergraduate, Samuels was sent by Senator Mike Crapo, to the 2007 African American Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C. Upon her return, she helped organize U of I’s Students for Obama campaign, which resulted in her becoming one of Latah County's 2008 Democratic Delegates to the State. Moreover, Samuels was recognized again her senior year for her participation and involvement on campus and in the community, as she received U of I’s 2008-2009 Richard Gibb Memorial Award and the 2008-2009 University of Idaho TRIO Achiever of the Year Award.
Samuels then began her pursuit of a Master of Public Administration at U of I in Fall 2011. She successfully completed her master's in Spring 2013. That fall, she began working in OMA as a temporary office assistant after which, she became an academic success counselor for SSS-TRIO. While working full-time for SSS-TRIO and raising her four children alone, Samuels began her Ph.D. in Political Science in 2016. In 2017 she spent some time as the project director for IKEEP, helping to lay some of the program’s infrastructure. In 2018, Samuels returned to SSS-TRIO. Throughout her time working at U of I, she also served on various institutional and community boards and committees, like the ACLU Board of Idaho. She further held positions like scholarship committee chair for the Idaho Association of TRIO Professionals and secretary for the Northwest Association of Educational Opportunity Programs. In the spring of 2019, her first book chapter, entitled Sika, was published in the book "The Reflexivity of Pain and Privilege: Autoethnographic Collection of Mixed Identity". Then in 2021, U of I awarded Samuels the Dr. Arthur Maxwell Taylor Staff Excellence in Diversity Award.
Samuels completed her doctorate in Political Science at U of I on Aug. 5, 2022. Her dissertation was entitled "The Politics of Exclusion: Joining Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) and Social Construction Policy Design (SCPD) to Examine U.S. Immigration Policy". Since May 2022, Samuels has been serving as an assistant director of the Office of Multicultural Student Services and retention counselor for the African American Student Center at Washington State University. Despite leaving U of I, she stays very involved with the BSU and BAACC and has even returned as a guest speaker for the Fall 2022 Black Lives Matter speaker series.
In Spring 2023, Samuels was awarded the Most Involved Faculty/Staff Award by WSU’s National Society of Black Engineers, and BAACC awarded her a “Building for the Future” Black Excellence Award for her work toward paving the way of future students. More recently, Samuels also received a Fall 2023 Arete Award from Washington State University’s Center Fraternity and Sorority Life for her outstanding contributions to WSU’s Multicultural Greek Counsel.