New wave of international students set to graduate

In this year's graduating class four international students will be receiving their degrees. Dirk Lorenz, senior physics major and native of Germany, as well as Aida Sopa, senior business administration major, Drenusha Bislimi, senior business administration and economics major, and Bukurije Zeqiri, senior economics and business management major, all of Kosovo, are expected to walk the stage May 9.

Originally from Khemnitz, Germany Lorenz first arrived at TLU in 2006.

"I plan to go to Rice University in the fall. Career-wise I think I would like to be a research scientist," Lorenz said.

Lorenz has managed to obtain his degree in three years; sufficient time for him to make close ties on campus.

"I think I'll actually miss tutoring math and computer science and just walking around campus and knowing a majority of the other people walking around campus," Lorenz said. "I'll definitely miss the professors, especially the ones in the physics department."

This year, as the seniors walk across the stage and families anxiously await their students name to be called, there are students like Sopa, Zeqiri and Bislimi, who have an entire country awaiting their return.

TLU, in collaboration with TLU alumni Faton Bislimi, founder of The Bislimi Group, has supplied the Education for Peace Scholarship to three to four scholars each year beginning in 2006.

The first class of Education for Peace Scholars began their TLU education in the fall of 2006. Now, as the 2009 graduates anticipate walking the stage in completion of their four year journey of obtaining a bachelors degree, Kosovo's first EFP scholars will be graduating and will either pursue graduate studies or will soon return to Kosovo to begin contributing to setting foundations for their countries prosperity and peace.

What marks the importance of this years graduation is the chance to begin seeing the results of a scholarship that has placed much hope and expectation on those attending the university as an EFP scholar, and as some of the first faces of hope for their country. It is a pivotal moment for those who are looking to these students as some of the best and brightest of and for their native countries.