Dino Harambasic

Final exams can be hard. Studying overnight is difficult. Learning the finer aspects of film and directing is definitely not easy.

But for Dino Harambasic, a 23-year-old Bosnia native, all of that is trivial. He's been through things much more difficult than three final exams in one day.

He escaped a war.

"My life has been about fighting hardship after hardship," Harambasic says. "You have to be tough. You can't lie down and be depressed."

Harambasic's journey to the award was by no means direct. He says he left Bosnia with his mother in 1992, when he was 9. At the time, Serbian soldiers occupied his home city. Though he left at the beginning of the war, Harambasic says he still has vivid memories of war in Bosnia.

He remembers when his mother used a car battery to power a lamp in their apartment. The Serbian soldiers across the creek would yell at her to turn it off, but he says, "She called their bluff sometimes. During nights, the only lights in town were coming from our apartment."

Once a boy on the street accosted Harambasic and asked about his religious and ethnic background.

"He asked what I was," Harambasic says. "I said, 'whatever you want me to be.' "

Harambasic and his mother fled to Serbia for a week, and then to Germany in their attempt to get to Sweden where they had family. But Swedish officials stopped Harambasic and his mother from entering Sweden three times, so they entered Sweden through Poland.

Harambasic says he doesn't like to follow others, that he's an individual. But once his following of others got him started on his journey to America.

"We went through Poland because it was easier to get in that way," he says. "After we got off the boat, we just followed the Swedes."

Harambasic lived in Sweden through high school. He had the opportunity to move to the United States because his father had moved to Utah. He declined because he wanted to finish high school in Sweden, but he says he wanted eventually to move to America.

"There was always this dream I had about America," he says. "I'm drawn to the fast-paced life. Also, if you work hard you can become anything in America."

Hard work is a term that characterizes Harambasic, says one of his film instructors.

"He has a very clear vision and tremendous work ethic," Susan Tavernetti says. "Sometimes you can catch this glimpse of steely determination behind his smiling eyes."

Harambasic speaks Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian, all slight variations of Serbo-Croatian. He says he also speaks English, Swedish, Danish, German, French and Norwegian.

Harambasic's interest in film began when his stepfather worked at a Swedish television station. Swedish students must pick "majors" before high school, so he declared film as his career very young. Film, he says, was a way to express himself and to show others a perspective on life that they may not see.

"The strongest way of putting out my emotions is through films," he says. "I also want to portray a picture of people like us who fled the war."

Harambasic will move from De Anza to study pre-cinema at San Francisco State University in the fall. He will travel to Sweden and Bosnia over the summer.

When he gets back, he will look for an internship to develop his editing skills in preparation for directing.

Harambasic says the recognition from the award means a lot to him.

"This award means someone out there was looking at me and my work," he says.

Beverly Parker

For some college students, knowledge consists of what they've gleaned from MTV, overpriced textbooks and banal lectures.

But for Beverly Parker, knowledge comes from much more than printed or spoken words. It comes from working in the corporate world, being laid off and becoming a student all over again--and finding her calling.

"I'm done with the corporate world," Parker says. "I am so much less materialistic than before. I've definitely been humbled."

Parker, 52, was elected to the student senate at De Anza and has been a Phi Theta Kappa member every quarter, which requires a minimum 3.5 cumulative grade point average. Her academic and service accomplishments led the way to three scholarships this year.

"I've had to struggle a lot," she says. "I wouldn't be able to go on without scholarships."

Parker was born in Manhattan and grew up in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. Queens College didn't work out for her, and she found a job with Trans World Airlines as a ground agent. She eventually married and had a daughter. Over the course of 20 years with TWA, Parker worked her way up to a regional sales position in New Jersey. She had a good salary and the job gave her the freedom to travel.

"I just wasn't really into school," Parker says. "My job was great, and I didn't miss it."

Eventually Parker started her own event planning company. After three years, she came to Silicon Valley and worked as a corporate travel consultant. When the economy went sour in the valley, she found herself unemployed and unsure of what to do next.

"I was downsized out, and I didn't want to go back to New York," she says.

So she "took a shot" and sold her car and moved into a garage apartment in Palo Alto and decided to return to school. She didn't know what she wanted to learn, only that she wanted to learn.

De Anza's RENEW program for re-entry students gave Parker the opportunity to get back into school.

"I didn't have a major in mind when I came back to school," she says. "That made it easier for me to learn because I took classes I thought were interesting."

Aside from helping her academically, the RENEW program has also become Parker's campus employment.

One of her former instructors, philosophy department chairwoman Cynthia Kaufman, says Parker was a remarkable student in her critical thinking and writing classes.

"Beverly has a level head," Kaufman says. "She's incredibly smart, and she always brought real-world knowledge and insight to class conversations."

Parker, who returned from a two-month, study-abroad program in Paris less than a week before graduation, will move to UC-Santa Cruz to major in American studies. After she completes her bachelor's degree, she says she wants to do graduate and post-graduate work in cultural anthropology and ethnic studies. She says one of her interests is in the field of European imperialism and colonization.

Through all of her experiences, Parker has learned that her calling is in academia, she says, not the travel industry.