CIEGS' Spring 2024 International Celebration Student Speaker a Model for Undergraduate Success

Florinda Gjypi, international student from Albania, will be featured as graduating international student speaker at the CIEGS Spring 2024 International Celebration on May 9, 2024. Florinda - affectionately known as Flor by her colleagues and friends - will also be presenting her Honor's English thesis at UAlbany Showcase at the end of April.  

To celebrate her upcoming graduation, Florinda will be joined by her mother and sister flying in from Albania to support her at a number of Commencement activities, including her stage crossings, Honor's English exercises, speaking events and the May 11, 2024, University-wide Undergraduate Ceremony where she will be proudly carrying her national flag in the international flag procession.

Florinda's studies focus on media and journalism, where she aims in the future to positively influence youth on a global scale through her journalistic work. While she is busy reading, researching and writing as an honor's student, Florinda has also been engaged in a number of ways on and off campus throughout her three-year UAlbany academic career.

Florinda has interned at WMAC/Northeast Public Radio and the International Center of the Capital Region, been a Massry Community Service Fellow, been Copyeditor/Writer for ASP,  and worked at the Annual Giving Call Center and Athletics as a Student Supervisor. She also filled the roles of a Housing Manager for Residential Life and Teaching Assistant Intern at UAlbany.

Florinda is a model undergraduate international student, as further exemplified by receiving the President's Award for Leadership - Outstanding Senior, and the President's Award for International Student Leadership this month. Most recently, she is the recipient of the prestigious President's Award for Undergraduate Research for the exceptional work on her English honors thesis "A Reinvention of the Fourth Wall Break."

It is no surprise, based on her strong engagement background and admirable academic accomplishments, that Florinda has been offered a prestigious fellowship for Fordham University’s Public Media Master’s Program among other competing offers. On behalf of CIEGS and UAlbany, we congratulate and wish Flor the best in her future endeavors where we know she will continue to make significant impacts on the world as she has done on the UAlbany campus.