Samantha Milano-Sumalinog – Outstanding Academic Achievement and Service Award for the Social Sciences

Congratulations to Samantha Milano-Sumalinog who received the Outstanding Academic Achievement and Service Award for the Social Sciences at the CHSS Convocation speaker for the ceremony on Wednesday, March 23, 2018.

As a nontraditional transfer student, Milano-Sumalinog took 4 years off between high school and college, spending her time working odd jobs in several states, from a bartender in New Hampshire to a preschool teacher in New Jersey to an entertainment review writer for a magazine in Manhattan.

Here at Montclair State, majoring in Justice Studies, she has worked at Leadership Development, redesigning their website, writing blog posts, and presenting nearly 30 workshops on personal and professional leadership topics, including Public Speaking, Emotional Intelligence, and Negotiating for Women. To further her leadership education, she attended the 7th Annual Leadership Institute, the Own The Room public speaking training, and completed tiers one and two of the Leadership Development Certificate Program. She was also invited to join the prestigious National Society for Leadership and Success.

This past semester, Milano-Sumalinog  has worked both as a legal intern at The Legal Aid Society of New York and as a policy and communications intern at the New York City Mayor’s Office for International Affairs at the United Nations. She was inducted into the Golden Key International Honors Society and the Lambda Epsilon Chi National Honor Society for Paralegal Studies. She was nominated for the Carpe Diem Award and recognized in both of her major concentrations for Extraordinary Academic Achievements. She got married, began writing her fourth novel, presented a paper at the Student Research Symposium, and still maintained her 4.0 GPA. Yet what she is most proud of is that she fulfilled her goal of reading one book a week every single week of her undergraduate studies.

Milano-Sumalinog’s academic endeavors have not been limited to Montclair State. Last year, she completed a TESOL Certification through Oxford’s online seminars and an Emergency Management certificate through FEMA’s online courses. She presented a research paper at Monmouth University’s Undergraduate Political Science Conference, where she won the award for Best Paper. She was also accepted to the highly competitive NEW Leadership conference at Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics, where she won the Networker of the Week prize. She was even offered a place as a Schwarzman Scholar at Tsinghua University’s International Law program in China. Most impressively, she participated as a Youth Delegate to the United Nation’s Winter Youth Assembly.

Milano-Sumalinog plans to spend the next year gaining work experience in the field of law and politics, after which she will attend Columbia University in pursuit of a dual Law Degree and a Masters of International Affairs. Eventually, she plans to work for the United Nations Security Council.