History Research and Community Engagement Lead to Future with Teach for America: Nitza Cabral, '20

Nitza Cabral is an Honors student graduating with a B.A. in history and a minor in Judaic Studies. Nitza has been awarded one of the highly sought-after positions with Teach for America.

Nitza is the recipient of the SBS Excellence in Leadership and Community Engagement Award, which recognizes a graduating senior who has demonstrated exemplary leadership skills through their involvement on and off campus and their impact on the lives of others.

Nitza’s first-year Honors project was about memories of prewar and wartime propaganda among postwar Soviet citizens who were youth when they first encountered it. She interned at the Tucson Jewish History Museum/Holocaust History Center and has served over the past two years as a public interpreter for museum visitors. 

Nitza has also participated in Honors College-sponsored volunteer projects related to local sustainability issues and homelessness. As an SBS student ambassador, Nitza represents the college at various events.

In her Honors thesis, Nitza connected her passion for Holocaust studies with her community engagement work. She investigated how French women Holocaust victims experienced dehumanization under the Nazis and wrote about it during the war. 

“As a member of the College of Social and Behavioral sciences, I truly feel that I experienced an education that was well-rounded and helped me engage with students from all backgrounds, which in turn helped widen my world view,” Nitza said.

Nitza said she has received tremendous support from faculty and staff in the Department of History.

“In the History Department, it is so evident how passionate everyone is about what they do, and how faculty and staff genuinely care for students,” Nitza said. “I feel so fortunate to have gotten to experience the University of Arizona as a student of history, because it opened up so many opportunities and connections for me, in ways I never thought possible.”

“Nitza is an unusually mature and gifted student,” said Susan Crane, associate professor in the Department of History. “Nitza’s successful application to Teach for America feels like the crowning achievement to an impressive academic and community engagement career at the University of Arizona. Nitza is a wonderful student and an engaging, open-minded, personable individual. Those kids in her class next year will be very lucky to have her.”