825 N University Ave
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Important Information
The School of Social Work Summer Commencement for Master of Social Work students will be held in person at Hill Auditorium and livestreamed on the SSW website. Hill Auditorium doors will open for guests and graduates beginning at 12 Noon.
A light reception will be held at the U-M School of Social Work in the Lower Level Atrium immediately following commencement.
Specific instructions and information will be added to this page as commencement approaches. In the meantime, view the School of Social Work Commencement Guide for general commencement information.
Speakers
Keynote Speaker Ashley Cureton
Ashley Cureton is an assistant professor in the School of Social Work and the Marsal Family School of Education at the University of Michigan. She has previously served as a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education and a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow and lecturer at Johns Hopkins University. Earlier in her career, she worked as a research associate at Northwestern University’s Institute for Policy Research and served as a research fellow for the U.S. Department of State in Turkey, where she worked directly with Iraqi and Syrian refugee youth in school and community settings.
As a forced migration and international social work scholar, Cureton uses community-based participatory research to design culturally specific programs that improve educational, environmental, and socio-emotional outcomes for refugee and migrant youth. Her extensive fieldwork spans over a dozen global contexts, including Uganda, Zambia, Turkey and India. She earned her PhD from the Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice at the University of Chicago and holds graduate certificates from Harvard University, the University of Oxford, and Northwestern University. An accomplished author, she has published research in top journals such as The Lancet, Journal of Adolescent Research, and Urban Education, and her work is funded by major institutions, including the UNHCR and SAMHSA.
She has received numerous prestigious honors for her leadership and teaching. She was named a 2025 Emerging Scholar by Diverse Issues in Higher Education, received the University of Chicago’s Elizabeth Butler (Alumni) Award for academic excellence within 10 years of graduating, and received multiple honors from U-M, including the 2022 Teacher of the Year Award. She serves on the Council on Social Work Education’s Council on Global Social Issues. A member of the Travelers’ Century Club since she has visited, lived, and worked in over 100 countries and all seven continents. She is currently finalizing an academic memoir analyzing her international travels through an intersectional lens as a Black woman.
Student Speaker Amal Issa
Amal Issa (she/her) is an educator, school leader and humanitarian whose work has centered on serving children, families and communities. Today, she is graduating with a Master of Social Work, adding to her Master of Arts in Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language from U-M and her Bachelor of Arts in English Writing and Literature from Eastern Michigan University.
As the executive director of GEE Preparatory, Issa leads multiple K–12 schools while advocating for equitable access to education and student well-being. Through her volunteer service as chief of staff at FAJR Global, she helped establish a free medical evacuation program in Jordan for children suffering from war-related blast injuries. Her experiences in education and humanitarian service inspired her pursuit of social work. She plans to integrate educational leadership, mental health and trauma-informed care to strengthen children, families and school communities. Issa was also recognized by the Arab America Foundation as a 40 Under 40 honoree for her leadership and community impact.
Student Speaker Chelsea Mudalagi
A career changer who came to social work after about ten years working in different nonprofit and public health settings, Chelsea Mudalgi is passionate about health equity. She has experience in program evaluation, tribal health, food security issues, HIV prevention and harm reduction. Most recently, Mudalagi co-led an AmeriCorps program at Wayne State University that has distributed over 50,000 doses of Narcan across Metro Detroit since 2019. For the last year, Mudalagi has been working at her field placement at Michigan Medicine's Livonia Health Center, an integrated primary care clinic that serves people from all walks of life, primarily in western Wayne County.
She loves the challenge of finding unusual community resources, especially when it seems like they don't exist. And she loves helping clients discover that the pieces of ourselves that are sometimes the hardest to face are just one part of our beautiful, messy human experience. Mudalagi hopes to continue working in medical social work after graduation. She stands here today deeply grateful for all her clients who took a chance on a nervous intern. It was an honor to walk alongside you.
She lives in Ferndale, Michigan, with her husband, Avi, and senior dog, Maisy.