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WMU student featured on "Oprah"

A Western Michigan University graduate student from Africa was a guest on the Oprah Winfrey TV talk show this week. Winfrey says she chose Tererai Trent because, in Winfrey's words, she went "ten thousand miles to make her dreams come true".

Trent has also been featured in the New York Times. She overcame poverty and domestic abuse in her native Zimbabwe to pursue her dream of higher education. For her doctoral degree at Western, Trent is researching evaluation of programs to fight the spread of HIV AIDS in developing countries. Trent is also a deputy director of Heifer International, an aid agency based in Arkansas that helped her get to the U.S. to study at Western and Oklahoma State University.