Profile of Muna Ngenda - Listen (MP3)
His father went to Temple University in Philadelphia so Muna Ngenda decided that too would be the university for him. “I’m from Zambia in Southern Africa, the capital city of Lusaka and right now I am attending Temple University in Philadelphia. It was recommended by my dad because he is a Temple alumni and after I looked at it I liked the ranking of the Business school, it is rather highly ranked and also because it has a diverse international student population so it seemed like a good choice,” he says.
"I decided to come to the United States because of the Law degree is something I could get from here. It is very influential I would say, it is good for my credentials and I wanted my education to be more international because I have studied in a few other countries so I thought I would add the United States to the list to round it off.”
Muna is twenty years old. His major is International Business, but he also is interested in Law as well. "I initially wanted to study Law, but while waiting to come to Law school because I planned to come to Las school in America and in America as opposed to England, the Law program is on a second degree,” he says. “You do the law after you get an undergraduate degree. So I decided to get my first official degree in Accounts[ing]. So After studying accounts a few years I decided that I like that field as well so I am going to do Business and Law so that is why I am studying Business as well.
"So I will be receiving a bachelors then I will go on to get a joint a JD MBA.”
From making new friends, getting to know the professors and participating in a few campus activities, Muna says he is getting the total university experience. “Things are going well, I settled in okay and started making a few friends. It was a bit rough at first trying to settle in and get use to the new environment and stuff, but you manage to adapt,” he says.
"The students are okay. The faculty is really cool. There are some excellent teachers, so I really like that. I would say the worse thing is probably been the weather. Otherwise, it has been a very good experience. It has been fun. It has been new and interesting. I joined a couple of organizations there is a student Christian organization that I am apart of as well as the organization of African students and I play sports every now and then. So I have had a good time here."
Zambia, England and the Ivory Coast in West Africa are places Muna have received education. Now, being in the United States he can share the differences and the importance of each system. "The things that I can note, I know back home the education is very intensive should I say that is the major difference I noticed between back home and other countries. The teachers would really push us a lot like during high school and primary school, during the earlier years, I notice that the teachers really pushed us a lot whereas when I went to England the emphasis was more on the student. If was your own decision whether to work hard or not, whereas with African education the teachers really make you work hard,” he says.
"There is a lot of teacher involvement. Then in Ivory Coast, it was a lot of the same thing. Ivory Coast was somewhere in between the two extremes and now in the [U-S] states I say it depends on the teachers some teachers will give you a lot of work to make you do the work, but, with the university it depends on the student themselves, how hard they want to work. The lectures are always available so when you need help, when you need some extra input its there.”
Muna says he even has set several goals for himself that he plans to achieve. “I like to graduate from the honors program, graduate with the highest credentials possible, get any extracurricular activities I can in, get any internships, job opportunities just to excel in my studies and to get my resume updated and develop a very good profile to get the most I can from being here.
When it comes to Muna's goals, graduating and future objectives, he says, “I should graduate in May 2011 or a little earlier if I get some additional transfer credits and my ultimate interest is business consulting. I would like to help people with business ideas, start their businesses and also pursue multi-national investments like getting international companies to invest in Africa, but before I do that I will probably get some experience with some large consulting firms, large business companies.
