Sherley Cruz
2025 Marjorie E. Kettell Distinguished Alum Award
Named in memory and honor of Dr. Marjorie E. Kettell, Class of 1947, this award is presented annually to bestow institutional recognition on one Harriet E. Richards Cooperative House alumna who has distinguished herself in her personal or professional life, in her intellectual pursuits, or in her dedication to service of community, country or society.
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Sherley Cruz is an Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee College of Law (UT Law) where she teaches with the Advocacy Clinic. In 2019, she became the College of Law’s first Latinx tenured-track professor.
Her scholarship, which explores the intersections of access to justice, low-wage workers’ rights, and cross-cultural communications, has won UT Law’s Wilkerson Research Junior Research Award and been presented at the Equality Law Scholar’s Forum and the American Association of Law School’s Poverty Law Workshop. Her service includes leadership roles with AALS’s Section on Employment Discrimination Law, the board of governors of the Society of American Law Teachers, and the executive committee of the American Association of Law Schools Clinical Teaching Section. Prior to joining UT Law, Professor Cruz taught at American University’s Washington College of Law, Suffolk University Law School, and Boston University School of Law.
She joined academia after over a decade as a public interest attorney that included service with the Office of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Wage and Hour Division and the Employment Law Unit of Greater Boston Legal Services. While practicing in Massachusetts, she was on the Executive Board of the Massachusetts Association of Hispanic Attorneys and was a member of the Massachusetts Women’s Bar Association Leadership Initiative. She has been recognized as a Boston Rising Star by the National Law Journal – Connecticut Law Tribune and as an Up-and-Coming Lawyer by the Massachusetts Bar Association – Lawyers’ Weekly. Sherley is a double BU Terrier. She graduated from Cum Laude from CAS in 1999 and LAW in 2003. She lived in the HER House from 1997-1999.