Posted: July 23, 2014
By: Tiffiney Miles, graduate Web assistant

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When looking for the best school to attend for his doctoral studies, Hassan Zamir chose USC's School of Library and Information Science for several reasons. "The research areas of the faculty matched with my research area," Zamir said, whose focus is on digital libraries and information retrieval.

Zamir researched which library schools were the highest ranking and found us to be one of them. He also found out that the school would accept his Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) scores.

The main differences that Zamir has found since he came to America are religious practices. "I am a Muslim," he said. "And in our country, we have mosques everywhere, but over here, we have two or three mosques in the area."

When it comes to culture, Zamir said that there used to be a rich variety of musical artists in his country; however, due to a civil war, most of those artists were killed. "We have lost a good generation, so we have a generation gap," he said. Now, more musicians in Bangladesh are integrating a westernized style into their music.

What Zamir wants to take back to Bangladesh is the discipline Americans have when it comes to scheduling and making deadlines.