Prof Tells Life Story in Autobiography
She came from a poor family in rural Malaysia that often struggled to put food on the table.
Her parents divorced when she was 2, and she was raised by a grandmother who had no formal education.
When she did persevere to pursue a college education more than 9,000 miles from home at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, an economic recession in her homeland in 1998 resulted in the suspension of her scholarship. A divorced and single mother at the time, she worked for a year as a full-time custodian at SIU to finance her education and support her young son.
Published on October 24, 2017
