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Jasmina Tumbas

Biography

Graduate Scholarship Biography (prepared September 2005): First named a Jack Kent Cooke Scholar in 2003 through the Undergraduate Scholarship Program, Jasmina Tumbas writes that her life has been an adventurous and remarkable journey. That is an understatement. Born in the former Yugoslavia, she fled with her family when her military father refused to shoot at demonstrating Kosovo Albanians in 1988. Jasmina and her family were in and out of refugee camps for several years before being sent to live in a German village, where they were the first and not-at-all-welcome foreigners. Looking back, Jasmina admires her parents' "courage in leaving Yugoslavia for ideological reasons to take on the burden of social and financial instability as their reward."

Jasmina discovered an early talent for art and a desire to combine her passion for art with her caring for people. She spent her teenage summers working with Kosovo Albanian refugees, guiding communal art projects like murals. She used art projects to help children who have severe behavioral problems and those who have lost members of their families. As an undergraduate student at Maryville College, where she won the award for outstanding international student, she was a founding participant in the Humanics program to certify students in non-profit organizational leadership.

Believing that "art is a vessel for human emotions, political criticism and the tenor of the time," Jasmina hopes that her postgraduate study in art history will be a resource to learn more about humanity and initiate a career in which art and community join. She says, "Working as an arts administrator for a non-profit organization supporting the arts within a less-privileged population of people would be an ideal career for me."

Undergraduate Scholarship Biography (prepared May 2003): Jasmina Tumbas' whole life changed at six, when her father refused to shoot demonstrating Kosovo Albanians in Yugoslavia, and her family fled to Germany. After the war broke out, her dad worked in a refugee camp with Kosovo Albanian refugees. Jasmina volunteered, and became a communicator for a psychologist who treated a girl who had become schizophrenic after multiple rapes and who would only talk with Jasmina. She also translated journals of other refugees who could not otherwise communicate, and started a club for adolescents to provide counseling, translation, art projects, and legal help.

When Jasmina came to Maryville, she wrote: "I was determined to study psychology although art had long been my passion. I was afraid because I thought one had to be 'born an artist.' When I instinctively filled my schedule with art history and drawing classes, I realized that I did not want to give up my passion." Jasmina maintains high grades in her double majors, art and psychology, and has committed to several leadership positions in the community.

Because she cannot legally work in the U.S., Jasmina depends on work-study. Money is tight: She was eligible to join Alpha Lambda Delta, but could not afford the fee. Nonetheless, she still gives to others, as a tutor to teenage mothers in GED classes, as a tutor at a jail, and as "a major contributor" to the theater department, from painting backdrops to designing posters.

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