ITHACA, N.Y. -- In 2003, with the War in Iraq under way, the Middle East was hardly a destination spot for most Americans. Sabeen Virani, a Cornell University senior from Santa Monica, Calif., wasn't daunted. She spent the fall semester of her junior year at the American University in Cairo, traveling to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Chris Hallman/University Photography

Sabeen Virani takes a break at the Alice H. Cook House, where she served as a student assistant her senior year.

Throughout her Cornell career, Virani has chosen the unfamiliar as a way to challenge herself both as a student and as a person. Even her cross-country move to Cornell demonstrated a willingness to explore the unfamiliar. "Cornell had all the elements I was looking for," says Virani, who has been accepted into a master's degree program in Middle Eastern studies at Harvard University. "It's big -- but not too big like some of the schools in the University of California system -- and offered a wide range of opportunities I wouldn't have been able to take anywhere else."

She began her studies in government and later added Near Eastern studies and international relations. The Near Eastern studies major "fell into my lap," she says.

"It's a small, supportive department that allows for a lot of freedom. I was able to study Arabic and Persian, languages I have always wanted to study, as well as travel abroad. The faculty also were very accessible, and I think that kind of openness is very unusual."

From the outset at Cornell, she was struck by the willingness of faculty and administrators to seek student input and put it to use. Virani's first experience with an open-door teaching style came during Friday lunches at Risley dining hall with Professor Isaac Kramnick, who was teaching a freshman course in government. Kramnick, vice provost for undergraduate education and co-chair of the West Campus Council, invited Virani to become a student adviser to the group, and in her senior year she signed on as a student assistant to the first generation of Cornell students in Alice H. Cook House. Cook house opened in August 2004 and is the first of five residential houses for upperclassmen as part of the West Campus Residential Initiative at Cornell.

In switching to Cook House, Virani once again took a different path by not spending her senior year living off campus.

She also has served as co-convocation chair and editor-in-chief of the Cornell Political Forum. In the latter capacity, she interviewed former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan and Poland Thomas W. Simons Jr. and former White House National Security Adviser Sandy Berger. Additionally, Virani recently received a Baccalaureate Service Award, presented by Cornell United Religious Work to a small number of students across all the colleges and professional schools.

"It would have been easy to just take 15 credits a semester, get into grad school and set myself up for a career -- but I wanted to take advantage of everything I could at Cornell," she says. "There is such an amazing wealth of opportunity here."