Vedrana Damjanovic was the only UF student to attend a conference at Yale University.
Damjanovic, a 20-year-old public relations sophomore, attended the 2015 European Student Conference on Feb. 13 and 14 at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. She was one of 80 selected from among 350 applicants.
The conference was made up of undergraduate and graduate students from European countries studying at universities in the U.S. They gathered to learn and discuss EU policies.
Originally from the small city of Doboj in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Damjanovic said she has always been active in her community through ToPeeR, an organization that roughly translates to “tolerance against differences” in English.
She began volunteering with the organization at 12 years old and estimates that she attended more than 30 conferences, which covered a wide range of issues, from HIV prevention to juvenile delinquency.
“That’s really my whole life,” Damjanovic said. “I really like to do things that could actually make some differences.”
Before the event, participants wrote policy papers on issues that would be discussed at the conference. Damjanovic said she was one of four participants to write about the importance of education in the digital economy.
Damjanovic said when they weren’t in workshops, participants had time to meet with various European leaders such as Richard Tufft, the region head of EMEA equity research for Goldman Sachs in London, whom she personally spoke to.
Amie Kreppel, a UF political science professor, taught Damjanovic in her Introduction to Comparative Politics honors seminar last year. Kreppel wrote in an email that she was pleased to hear Damjanovic was one of the few students accepted.
“She shows a great deal of promise,” Kreppel said. “Her willingness to work extra hard to overcome the difficulty of studying in English was impressive.”
[A version of this story ran on page 5 on 2/24/2015 under the headline “UF student visits Yale for European Student Conference”]
