Tuesday, August 3, 2004

WRITER: Phil Williams, 706/542-8501, phil@franklin.uga.edu
SOURCE: Lorina Naci, lorin@uga.edu

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA STUDENT’S LONG JOURNEY FROM ALBANIA ENDS WITH THREE DEGREES, $50,000 GRADUATE SCHOLARSHIP

ATHENS, Ga. – When Lorina Naci left Albania to attend college in the United States, her neighborhood was collapsing toward civil war. Every day, the streets were filled with the sound of gunfire and heavy weapons. But if Naci already knew one thing, it was the meaning of accomplishment. She even had to smuggle her application to college in the U.S. with the help of family friends, since Albania’s borders were closing and its international mail system jammed.

Naci will graduate this summer from the University of Georgia, having earned bachelor’s degrees in studio art and cognitive science and a master’s degree in artificial intelligence simultaneously. And her journey will continue: She has been awarded an annual scholarship worth up to $50,000 from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation in Virginia, which she intends to use in the doctoral program in cognitive neuroscience at England’s storied University of Cambridge.

She is the first UGA student to win a Cooke Foundation scholarship.

“My years at UGA have really been great,” said Naci (pronounced NAH-chee). “Everyone has been so generous and encouraging. There is such an open atmosphere here, and I will miss Athens.”

While earning her degrees at UGA, Naci, a Foundation Fellow, was co-instructor for a psychology course, recorded books for the blind and dyslexic, led the European Student Association and represented international students at UGA.

Naci was one of 39 students awarded 2004 Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Graduate Scholarships. They were announced July 13. Each of the recipients will receive an annual award of up to $50,000, for the length of their graduate or professional degree programs. These are the largest scholarships offered by any private foundation in the U.S.

Naci grew up under the Communist system in Tirana, the capital of Albania, and despite the problems with the government, she had what she calls a “normal childhood,” full of excitement in learning and crammed with extracurricular activities.

“The last year of high school, I was studying English with Fredericka Buesing, an American citizen in Albania,” said Naci. “Both she and her husband became close family friends during their time in Tirana. They encouraged and helped me to apply to a university in the United States and became my American parents in this country. When the borders of Albania closed, they had to be evacuated, and they helped to take my application outside the country. Since they lived in north Georgia, they sent my application to North Georgia College, where I was first enrolled.”

By then, the economy of Albania was collapsing, and firefights were breaking out in the streets. Naci left the country and came to Dahlonega and started school there, but it was immediately clear that she was an extraordinary student who might flourish in a larger university.

“What enabled me to get in UGA was that the president of North Georgia wrote to the president here and found a way for me to get a waiver on out-of-state tuition,” said Naci. “I was so grateful for that.” Within a year, she was deeply involved with the Honors Program, which she gives great credit for her success here, and after being named a Foundation Fellow, she was on the fast track for superior academic achievement.

As a student at UGA, she has had an installation of her conceptual artwork, and she also co-taught a psychology class called, somewhat whimsically, “Various Things that the Brain Does.” Along the way, she began corresponding with a neuroscientist at the University of Cambridge, and that led her to apply there for graduate work. (Naci was also accepted at prestigious Washington University in St. Louis.)

This year’s recipients for the Cooke awards were chosen from a pool of 1,226 nominees submitted by 747 colleges. Since beginning the program in 2002, the Foundation has awarded 132 graduate scholarships worth $24 million through the life of the awards. The latest group of Cooke Scholars, which includes 23 women and 16 men, will study such diverse disciplines as law, archaeology and aerospace engineering. Scholarship amounts for each recipient are based on several factors, including costs at the college or university he or she attends and are renewed each year based on performance. Those accepted had to show not only exceptional academic ability but a strong will to succeed and other qualities such as critical thinking, a sense of service, and a love of the arts or humanities.

The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation is a private, independent foundation established in 2000 by the estate of Cooke to help young people of exceptional promise reach their full potential through education. Cooke made a fortune in the communications industry, at one time owned the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team, and on his death in 1997 was owner of the Washington Redskins football team.