Rwandan students at CCNY prepare to serve their country

Yves Ngabonziza, Ph.D., professor and director of the engineering science program at LaGuardia Community College, is a proud City College of New York graduate and a proud Rwandan. So proud, in fact, that he wanted young Rwandans to avail themselves of the superior education such as the one that he received at the Grove School of Engineering, from which he graduated with a mechanical engineering degree in 2008.

An active member of the tiny but close-knit Rwandan community in the New York metropolitan area, Ngabonziza initiated a conversation with the country’s United Nations Permanent Mission in 2021 about a prospective partnership with prominent STEM schools in the U.S. Such a partnership would entail establishing a government-funded scholarship for five to 10 Rwandan undergraduates to study science or engineering, then return home to enter the country’s public service.

Ngabonziza developed his proposal further with Lt.-Col. Deo Mutabazi, the defence and military advisor to the Rwandan mission. With the proposal approved and funded, Ngabonziza presented it to President Vincent G. Boudreau and to Dee Dee Mozeleski, vice president of the Office of Institutional Advancement, Communications and External Relations, and the executive director of the Foundation for City College.  They enthusiastically accepted it.

“I was really taken by Yves’s memories of his own time at City, and his belief that for this new generation of students, there was no better place to study than on this campus,” said Mozeleski, noting that the current enrollment includes students from more than 150 countries. “We are grateful to him, to Lt. Col Mutabazi, and to the Rwandan Mission for their enthusiastic support of this initiative.”

While Mutabazi’s official role is coordinating his country’s participation in peacekeeping operations around the world, he gave himself another task.

“I am using my time here to help the Ministry of Defence to find the next generation of leaders to help this country,” he said.

Out of 10 inaugural applicants, selected from a pool of 80, each of whom had to pass a series of exams in math and English to qualify, two started at Grove in August: Hirwa Divin Iradukunda and Ivan Muhizi, graduates of the same high school in Kigali, the capitol. Irakunda is a self-described “computer nerd” who likes “anything to do with computers.” Muhizi, a mechanical engineering major, wants to develop machinery. 

The two, who are roommates at The Towers, are settling into life in the big city as they immerse themselves in their studies. Muhizi even finds New Yorkers to be “friendly.”

For Ngabonziza, Iradukunda and Muhizi represent “just the beginning of broader cooperation” between his native country and other U.S. universities.

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