The number of international students at the University of Iowa who study abroad has increased.

The University of Iowa Indian Student Alliance, South Asian Student Alliance, and the Pakistani Student Association will host a Diwali celebration on Saturday night.

The Muslim American community members in Iowa City hold a panel discussion as Election Day comes closer.

Diane Jahnel, originally from Anamosa, Iowa, graduated from the University of Iowa in 1977, where she studied psychology and art. After a 34 year career in IT at Pearson, Jahnel retired and is now living in Paris, France, where she’s spent the past two years teaching English as a volunteer, taking French classes, and traveling.

Yezi Shen graduated from the University of Iowa in 2015, where she studied journalism and mass communication, and cinema. Since then, she’s returned to her home country, China, where she now works in television programming.

Originally from Irbid, Jordan, Nayef Saleh Al Gharaibeh graduated from the University of Iowa in 1988 with his Ph.D. in physiology and biophysics. He returned to his home country where he currently teaches physiology at the Jordan University of Science and Technology (JUST), and has also held positions as the chairman of the Department of Physiology and Biochemistry, director of the JUST Health Center, and the vice dean of Faculty of Medicine.

Ellen Hazelkorn will be kicking off the Commitment to Internationalization lecture series with her talk, “Internationalization and the Geopolitics of Higher Education,” on Wednesday, November 16, at 4:30 p.m. in the Old Capitol Senate Chamber.

A former naval commander and aide to two U.S. vice presidents and one president, Howard Kerr says his greatest pleasure today comes from bringing a little ‘real world’ experience into the academic space. “When students tell me that I’m lucky to have had the experiences I’ve had, I agree, but with a big caveat. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Elmo Zumwalt once defined luck for me as preparation waiting for opportunity,” says Kerr. “I took classes in Schaeffer Hall sixty years ago, sitting in the same seats they’re in, and I didn’t have any idea what I’d be doing when I left the university. But I found out that my time here at the university had prepared me to take advantage of opportunities that presented themselves. This is the message I try to pass on to students.”

Cheng-I Chu, “Chu,” graduated from the Ph.D. program in health policy and management at the University of Iowa in 2001. He now resides in Hualien, Taiwan, where he is the professor and department chair at the Department of Public Health, Tzu Chi University in Taiwan.

Dr. Darren R. Grafius is originally from East Lansing, Michigan, and graduated from the University of Iowa in 2012 with a degree in geography. Today, he resides in the United Kingdom, where he moved to be with his partner, and now works as a post-doctoral research fellow at Cranfield University. The focus of his work is conducting environmental modeling and ecosystem services assessment as part of a government-funded consortium project studying biodiversity in urban landscapes.