May 2010 Student Speaker

It was a visit to campus while still in high school that may have played the biggest role in Patricia Dziekonska's decision to attend UM-Flint. She only visited one campus before deciding.

There were a few other factors: close to home, affordable, offered a degree that she wanted to pursue, and many family members and friends had attended in the past. As for family members, she is the 13^th of 14 children.

She was Valedictorian of her high school class, and then right out of high school, she participated in an international volunteer program. As part of the program, she spent two years in California as a full time Catholic missionary running a girls' leadership program that entailed weekly meetings, workshops, fundraisers, annual retreats, camps and conventions. During that time she had many opportunities to attend leadership conventions in the US, Germany, Italy, Israel, and Poland.

"When I returned home to Michigan I attended UM-Flint, and continued to volunteer my time by helping out in the community, and the Church over Spring Break or by participating in local missions," said Dziekonska.

Recalling her years at UM-Flint, she said she, "appreciated the way professors challenged me to apply the theory they taught to real life situations by pitching public relation campaigns to actual clients, creating a pamphlet for Linguistics or producing research experiments."

In 2009, Dziekonska moved to Poland where she married her husband, and lived for a year. She continued her education at UM-Flint by taking three full semesters of online courses, keeping on track to finish her degree in 4 years.

Today, she will receive a Bachelor of Arts in Communication, "I would love to pursue a career in event planning or as an organizational consultant."