Dashini Jeyathurai, ex-student of Sekolah Rendah Kebangsaan (Perempuan) Yahya Awal selected to be valedictory speaker at US university

Source : NST

Stories abound over the achievements of Asian students in American universities.
Last month, 13-year-old child prodigy Sameer Mishra from India stunned the American nation by winning the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee competition in Washington.

Today, it is a Malaysian girl’s turn to bag a rare distinction.Dashini Jeyathurai, 24, from Johor Baru, has been selected as one of two students out of the 30 bright students who auditioned for delivering the valediction speech on “Disorienting Dilemmas: Getting an Education.” She arrived in the United States in 2004 to pursue an undergraduate course in English and Womens Studies as her major and minor subjects at the reputed Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. The course is courtesy of Starr International Scholarship, awarded by the C.V. Starr Foundation in the US.

This month, Jeyathurai graduated with a summa-cum-laude distinction which is awarded to students who graduate with a 3.90 score and above.“I was the only Malaysian out of six students granted scholarships,” she said in an interview with Bernama.Jeyathurai is planning to study for her PhD in English and Womens Studies at the University of Michigan, a five-year academic endeavour.

She began her education at the Sekolah Rendah Kebangsaan (Perempuan) Yahya Awal in Johor Baru, then went on to further studies in Singapore on an Asean scholarship.Jeyathurai has received accolades at Carleton, including the Mortar Board Fund Prize, Niles Prize in Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the Noyes Prize which is awarded to distinguished scholars from the junior class. This year, she won the Scott Tyler Bergner Prize for demonstrating excellence in character and thought, and the Andrea Iseminger Endowed Scholarship which enabled her to study theatre and empire literature in London.