Tazkira Amin named MSU School of Social Work 2025 Outstanding Senior

April 2, 2025 - Brandon Drain

The Michigan State University School of Social Work honors Tazkira Amin as its 2025 Outstanding Senior Award recipient.

This award recognizes a graduating senior who has demonstrated exemplary academic and extracurricular successes, and a strong sense of leadership, commitment and dedication to MSU.

“I am grateful to have even been considered for this award, let alone to have received it,” said Amin. “The close relationships that I have developed with faculty and my peers in the School of Social Work have been solely due to my love for connection, so I am honored that this community has deemed me worthy of this.”

Amin’s career at MSU has been positively influenced by her time spent in the Social Science Scholars Program (SSSP)—an initiative that offers research and leadership opportunities, mentorship, and a chance to get to know faculty members.

Of those faculty members, John Waller, the director of the Social Science Scholars Program, made the largest, most positive impact on Amin.

“It is not an understatement when I state that he has changed my life,” said Amin. “He has helped me become a better writer, friend, and person.” Waller’s influence, led by his kind and compassionate nature, is the lens by which Amin lives her life and pursues her future, she said.

“Taz is a model student because she is so much more than academically excellent,” said Waller, “she is also unfailingly generous, kind, wise, mature, and ethical.” In all his decade-long time spent as director of the program, Waller states, “I have not had the pleasure of teaching or getting to know a more admirable student.” Taz approaches life with a rare selflessness which is rewarded by close friendships and the respect and admiration of everyone around her, said Waller.

For a large part of her time at MSU, Amin worked with a non-profit called Humanity for Prisoners (HFP): an organization that works one-on-one with people in prison to provide personalized services which empower them to receive support and assistance.

It was during her time spent working there that she realized she could make an actual difference in the world.

Amin was a part of a team that connected clients to loved ones with whom they lost contact with. After her first year on the team, she was contacted by the former volunteer manager, informing her that an interaction she’d facilitated led a mother to find her son after presuming he was dead.

“I think about that a lot,” said Amin. “If I make no other impact in my life, that experience has shown me that I have and can continue to make a difference.”

It was during her freshman year that Amin would come to realize exactly how she could make a difference in the world.

In a SSSP class, Amin read a book called The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit by Thomas Sugrue.  This book touched on the numerous barriers placed on African Americans in the Detroit area, including racial covenants and blockbusting efforts that kept them confined to certain parts of the city.

“It was this very book that allowed me to recognize the importance of combining urban planning and social work to create change,” she said.

After graduation, Amin will pursue both a Master of Social Work and a Master of Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. This interdisciplinary approach highlights “the importance of considering urban systems, such as transportation and housing, when helping individuals get access to the resources they need,” said Amin.

Amin is set to graduate on May 3, 2025. She credits her time at MSU with shaping both her career path and her personal growth.

“I learned that it is okay, and even important to rely on others when there is a collective objective,” she said. “By utilizing everyone's strengths and being collaborative, reaching the goal is even more enjoyable and rewarding.”

 

Tazkira Amin is a senior from Warren, MI, who embodies Spartan pride through her academic achievements and community service. Tazkira is graduating with a degree in Social Work with minors in Cities: Environment, Design and Society. She has contributed significantly to organizations like the Center for Community Engaged Learning, Humanity for Prisoners, and Women*s Council—and was also a part of the 2024 MSU Homecoming Court.