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Argjenta Orana, Biomedical Engineering

It's not uncommon for a Drexel student to conduct an independent co-op search. It is uncommon, however, for a student's search to extend to a country 4,500 miles away.

For Argjenta Orana, a senior biomedical engineering major in the accelerated B.S./M.S. degree program, the decision to go to Kosovo for her first co-op began years earlier.

"I was born in Kosovo, and came to the United States with my parents when I was 7 years old," she explains. "I returned to Kosovo in 2000 and 2001, and when I started looking for a co-op assignment in 2001, I decided to try and find something there."

The opportunity to spend time in her birthplace and learn more of the language was enticing; but what solidified her decision was seeing the effects of war on Kosovo, and her desire to do something about it.

Her co-op search took her to Michigan-based International Aid, a company through which humanitarian efforts in Kosovo are organized. Argjenta learned that they sponsored a program to teach Kosovo residents to repair and maintain their own medical equipment. Argjenta spoke with the company's president several times about the company's mission and what her role would be. Impressed with her credentials, he invited the then 19-year-old to travel to Kosovo as an assistant teacher.

Once in Kosovo, Argjenta quickly learned that her role was going to be broader than she had anticipated. Her boss, an American doctor who was on a two-year assignment, entrusted her with a tremendous amount of responsibility. This included conducting weekly training sessions with Albanian trainees, giving lectures about various kinds of biomedical equipment to technicians, and even presenting status reports to officials from the Swedish company funding the training.

"Representatives from the Swedish International Development Agency, Sida, the organization funding the project, came to Kosovo about four months into my co-op assignment. I had to give presentations on the status of the training, and report on how each trainee was doing. They basically wanted to know if their money was being put to good use, and my data helped prove that. I enjoyed it because it was very formal. The experience taught me a lot about biomedicine as a broad field. These members of Sida met with members of the interim government of Kosovo, and I went with them, so I got to meet government officials and hear about their plans to restructure the entire health care industry in Kosovo."