![\"Amjad](\"https:\/\/www2.baylor.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/dabi-may17.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Amjad Dabi is one of the 2,500+ members of Baylor’s Class of 2017 who will\u00a0take the symbolic walk from undergraduate to graduate this weekend during\u00a0Baylor\u2019s Spring Commencement ceremonies<\/a>. For Dabi, who will\u00a0receive his Bachelor\u2019s of Music degree in piano pedagogy, that walk has been nearly eight years in the making, thousands of miles and a war-torn world away from where he began his collegiate journey.<\/p>\n Dabi\u00a0is from Syria, a nation gripped in a devastating civil war for the last six years. Half a million Syrians have lost their lives in the war, and\u00a0millions more have given\u00a0up everything to flee the violence. For Amjad, the promise of a Baylor education, propelled by the kindness of people he barely knew, proved to be his ticket out.<\/p>\n Amjad’s journey to Baylor actually began before the war started, back in 2010.\u00a0While studying music at a local conservatory, he met Dr. Bradley Bolen<\/a>, a Baylor music\u00a0professor who travels the world with \u201cAmerican Voices<\/a>,\u201d a cross-cultural nonprofit that provides support to music students around the world. Dabi\u00a0appreciated Bolen\u2019s encouragement to consider Baylor, but he was content with the path he was on; in addition to studying music, he was on his way to earning a degree in civil engineering. To leave would mean starting his education from scratch.<\/p>\n Then came the war. By 2012, Dabi’s\u00a0hometown of Damascus was no longer safe; things got\u00a0even worse when the\u00a0Syrian economy collapsed and his parents\u2019 life savings plummeted almost overnight. Bolen stayed in touch with Amjad, and when a car bomb exploded right outside his home later that year, he decided it was time to go.<\/p>\n Through the efforts of Bolen and American Voices, Dabi\u00a0ended up in Thailand, where he took the SAT and prepared an application. In 2013, he received a full scholarship to Baylor. Bolen and others at Seventh & James Baptist Church worked out\u00a0a free place for him to live, and so that fall, Dabi\u00a0arrived at Baylor as a 23-year-old freshman.<\/p>\n Over the last four years,\u00a0Amjad has thrived as a student.\u00a0Dr. Bowen and other Baylor staff members and students served\u00a0as surrogate parents and siblings, helping him whenever he had a need or felt the weight of the situation back home.\u00a0\u201cSyria is with me all the time,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m here, but I check the news three or four times a day. My family is still there, and channels of communication are not reliable. I hope I can take what I\u2019ve learned to help them eventually.\u201d When his worries for his homeland became too strong, he found refuge in recital halls and practice rooms, expressing on the piano what words sometimes could not. Music, he says, \u201cis a good way to externalize whatever emotions you\u2019re having. It helps you deal with and understand your own emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n This weekend, eight years after his\u00a0college career was interrupted by catastrophe, Amjad\u00a0will receive his diploma. \u201cTo say I\u2019m over the moon is putting it mildly,\u201d he says. \u201cIt feels like a milestone I\u2019ve achieved in my life. Circumstances outside our control happen. For me, this is a symbol of overcoming a lot of challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition to earning his piano pedagogy degree, he also entered the pre-med track at Baylor. This fall, he will go straight into Baylor\u2019s Environmental Science Ph.D. program<\/a>, where he\u2019ll work in the lab of Dr. Erica Bruce<\/a>\u00a0studying the relationship between human health and environmental toxins.\u00a0He hopes to help his family in the years ahead, either financially or bureaucratically. He\u2019ll be able to in part because so many Baylor people helped him.<\/p>\n \u201cThe kindness of people really amazes you. So many people here at Baylor cared. It\u2019s such a good remedy when you\u2019ve seen the atrocious things people are capable of doing. To see kindness was a good perspective for me to be privy to. It\u2019s been a lot of sweat and tears, and it motivates me that so many people have put their faith in me. People here funded my entire education. I want to show them it was a good investment.\u201d<\/p>\n Sic \u2019em, Amjad!<\/p>\n