EAST LANSING, Mich. – From a war-torn country to a commencement stage at Michigan State University, Bosnia native Azra Kapetanovic is someone who knows the value of an education.
The 24-year-old electrical engineering major in the College of Engineering has escaped genocide and displacement to a refugee camp, and has begun life anew in the United States and MSU. She will graduate at 2 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 10, at the Jack Breslin Student Events Center.
Her personal philosophy is: “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.”
“For the past five years that I have spent at MSU, I have worked tremendously hard to make my dreams come true,” said Kapetanovic, a 2000 graduate of Troy Athens High School. “Due to my unique background, I am constantly seeking better ways to commit to life-long learning and multicultural experiences.”
Kapetanovic’s story begins in the city of Prijedor, Bosnia, in early April 1992, where she lived peacefully with her parents, Kemal and Sabina Kapetanovic, and younger brother Haris, now an MSU sophomore, just before the onset of the war.
“It seems like a lifetime, and a world ago, my family and I lived in a wonderful Bosnian home surrounded by the people and things I loved,” she said. “I was a happy child who enjoyed every hour of the day and everything I was blessed with. My goal was to be accepted into the School of Engineering at the University of Sarajevo.”
When war erupted between the Serbs, Bosnians and Croats within the region, Kapetanovic and her family were caught in the middle. Her parents were harassed and fired from their jobs, her family went into hiding and open bloodshed and carnage ruled the streets. Several years of war, genocide and ethnic cleansing within the country would amount to an estimated 200,000 deaths.
“That was the time when I found out the real meanings of words like ‘war,’ ‘destruction,’ ‘mass-murder,’ ‘terror’ and ‘disaster,’” Kapetanovic said. “Our freedom was denied in every way possible.”
After three years under sentry of the Serbs, Kapetanovic and her family were expelled to a refugee camp for several months. They made their way to the United States with the help of a refugee relocation organization. They landed in Michigan, first in Hamtramck and then Troy. Never thinking she would need to speak English in Bosnia, Kapetanovic’s struggle to learn the language made the first years of school hard.
“I was so shy. I was afraid to talk, to say anything,” she said. “The biggest fear I had was, ‘how am I going to go to college?’”
Eventually, Kapetanovic acclimated herself to life in America. She joined student groups, played sports, made friends and performed well in her classes. Acceptance to MSU put her back on course to completing her life-long dream.
While at MSU, Kapetanovic has been a member of the Society of Women Engineers and the Multi-Racial Unity Living Experience Organization. She has served as residence hall mentor for other students through the Department of Residence Life. Her volunteer activities included tutoring math and science at Allen Elementary School in Lansing, and calculus at MSU through the Diversity Programs Office. She returned to Bosnia for a summer to teach computer skills and English to orphaned children in Sarajevo.
Kapetanovic has also taken internships with Electronic Data System in Lansing, providing technical support for General Motors, and with International Business Machines in both Rochester, Minn., and Boblingen, Germany.
She credits her professional success to the strong ties she’s made with her professors at MSU and her parents for their support.
“Here I felt I could talk to professors and ask them for help anytime. I would probably never have gotten a job at IBM if I had not gone to MSU,” Kapetanovic said. “I also don’t think I would be where I am today if I didn’t have my parents behind me.”
Upon concluding her undergraduate studies, Kapetanovic plans to further her education by entering MSU’s electrical engineering graduate program.