SAU alum serves in Africa with Peace Corps
By Rachel Jenkins
MAGNOLIA, AR (06/05/2026) Mulerider alum Kamrin Hooks of Shreveport, LA, is currently serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Lesotho (pronounced luh-SOO-too), where she is teaching life skills, basic arithmetic, and English as part of a two-year assignment.
Hooks has always preferred to stay busy. A former scholarship track athlete, President’s Ambassador, and president of her sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, Inc., she graduated with her BA in history in 2022 and went on to earn her MPA with a social entrepreneurship emphasis from SAU.
Teaching in Lesotho is not Hooks’s first experience with education in Africa. As a graduate student, Hooks collaborated with Assistant Professor of Marketing Dr. Stephen Juma to establish a nonprofit for a remote community outside of Kisumu, Kenya, with whom he had been working to fundraise. By filing the 501(c)(3) paperwork for the nonprofit known as Mzima, Hooks played a pivotal role in moving the organization closer to its goal of building a modern, permanent school and clinic.
After earning her MPA SE in 2023, Hooks returned to Shreveport, working as a Land Planner I and Executive Assistant at the Metropolitan Planning Commission before applying for a Peace Corps placement, eager to make an impact on a greater scale.
“Nothing can truly prepare you for the Peace Corps, but I have a mindset that SAU instilled in me. My professors gave me a real-life education in skill development. Those history classes taught me how to surrender to what I’m learning, taking what I think and feel out of the equation in order to step into another person’s shoes,” Hooks said. “That sort of thinking-arguing my opinions as well as someone else’s-gave me a different mindset. Because of that I’m confident that I can fit in any room.”
As the daughter of former teacher Karen Hooks and former principal Greg Grace, Hooks understands how a strong educational foundation can change lives. She is also planning to travel an additional 3,000 miles to visit Mzima headquarters in Kenya to see how the Majwero School, on which her MPA SE professional project was based, is progressing.
“What I’m doing in the Peace Corps is the hands-on version of what I did for the Mzima professional project,” Hooks said. “I can apply what I learned at SAU to what I am doing in Lesotho.”
To learn more about the master of public administration program and the exciting work SAU students are championing, visit saumag.edu/mpa/. To learn more about Mzima, visit https://mzima.org/.
About SAU:
Southern Arkansas University provides students with the complete college experience in a caring environment of service, innovation, and community. With more than 100 degrees across four distinct colleges and the School of Graduate Studies, SAU initiates new degree programs to meet the needs of today’s career and professional trends. To learn more about SAU, visit www.saumag.edu.
