Student Profiles

Home Country: Palestine
Major: Biology and Chemistry

Class of 2011

I went to high school in my hometown of Ramallah, Palestine. All through high school, I was interested in coming to the United States for college. I believed that attending college in the U.S. would be a great experience for me, especially that I was interested in getting a degree in the Science field. I learned about Guilford through a charitable organization called “The Hope Fund”. Its Founder, Fahim Qubain, in collaboration with several people at Guilford, generously granted me a full scholarship, which eventually enabled me to pursue my dream of coming to school in the United States.

This is my third year at Guilford, and my experience here has exceeded all my expectations. I love being in small classes, where each student has an equal opportunity to participate, ask questions and express their opinions. I also like the personal nature of relationships between instructors and students, which allows us to have direct interactions with professors whom we call by the first name!

One of my favorite things about Guilford is how open and diverse everyone on campus is. Since I have been here, I have been lucky to meet people from different countries around the world, with different languages and cultural experiences. People (students, faculty and staff) have also been very interested in learning about my own culture and experiences. One of the ways I tried to teach people about my religion and where I came from was by becoming the president and one of the founders of the Muslim Student Association (MSA). MSA is a student organization that arranges many events that are open to the entire Guilford community and that teach non-Muslims not only about Islam, but also about the cultures in different Muslim countries around the world. The community has been totally supportive of MSA and many Americans have become members and officers in our student organization.

I have had a great experience at Guilford and I know I will be a part of the Guilford community for the rest of my life.  I know that I will continue to have great experiences here. The latest of which is the internship that I am doing in the Neurobiology and Anatomy department at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. This internship is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that would have never been achievable had I not been a student at Guilford.