Cho, Panchal and Loganathan - A tale of 3 different personalities | 
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Cho's father, Cho Seong-tae, told the landlord he was leaving for America to seek a better life. So in 1992, the 8-year-old boy found himself in northern Virginia, where his family ran a dry-cleaning business and lived in a two-story townhouse. While Cho attended Westfield High School in Chantilly, Va was gaining a reputation as a loner.
Minal Panchal was studying in Mumbai, India, focused on becoming an architect like her late father. Books lined the walls of her room, and she was popular with neighbors.
She earned a bachelor's degree from Mumbai's Rizvi College of Architecture, and school director Akhter Chauhan said she was eager for more _ but felt she needed to study in the United States to learn the most advanced techniques. She determined that Virginia Tech was best for advanced building science. Chauhan wasn't surprised that she was accepted.
Minal Panchal was studying in Mumbai, India, focused on becoming an architect like her late father. Books lined the walls of her room, and she was popular with neighbors.
"The children in the building would go to Minal's house for help with school homework like math,"said neighbor Jayshree Ajmane. Panchal
"liked swimming and loved reading. But what she was crazy about was architecture and buildings,"said her friend Chetna Parekh.
She earned a bachelor's degree from Mumbai's Rizvi College of Architecture, and school director Akhter Chauhan said she was eager for more _ but felt she needed to study in the United States to learn the most advanced techniques. She determined that Virginia Tech was best for advanced building science. Chauhan wasn't surprised that she was accepted.
"She would have walked into any university,"he said.
[ Continued in Full Post ]
Daniel Perez Cueva, grew up playing soccer on a potholed street outside his family's apartment in the crime-ridden Bellavista neighborhood of Lima's port district. He came to the United States with his mother and his sister Vanesa, who is married to a soldier now fighting in Iraq.
"He dreamed of coming to Virginia Tech because of its prestige and he did it," his mother Betty told Peruvian radio station RPP by phone from Virginia. "For my children, I've made it through the good times and the bad in this country ... and we've worked it out little by little, until this happened."
Virginia Tech also was a dream come true for G.V. Loganathan, a 51-year-old engineering professor who grew up as the son of a railway worker in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, an area famed for producing turmeric.
Loganathan earned two engineering degrees in India, then came to the United States. After earning a doctorate in hydraulics and systems engineering at Purdue University, he was desperate to stay and teach in America. He gladly took the post at Virginia Tech, where his 21-year-old daughter now studies, said his brother, G.V. Palanivel.
He loved his job so much, he wanted to be buried on campus to be near his students, his wife, Usha, told The Indian Express newspaper: "My husband has dedicated his heart and soul to his students, and wanted to be close to the institute even after his death."
Originally Digged from GainPals
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