If you ever need to find Mwanahawa Rashid, start with downtown Longview. She is probably exploring a new coffee shop, browsing antique stores, or introducing friends to her latest discovery in a frozen yogurt shop. If she is not out and about, she is likely in the Hive ordering her go-to chicken quesadilla. “Before I came to LeTourneau, I had never had cheese in my life,” she laughed. Mwanahawa brings that same sense of adventure to everything she does. She arrived from Tanzania with dreams of studying aviation, only to discover that LeTourneau offered something better than she expected. “I just felt like God was pulling me to come here,” she said. A friend back home first told her about the school’s unusual program combining aviation and engineering, and once she researched it and learned it was Christian based, everything fell into place. “I went to Christian school since kindergarten, so finding out it was Christian was good for me.”
Her first weeks on campus were challenging as she navigated American culture for the first time, but everything changed when she joined the rugby team. “My first day of practice was not the best,” she admitted, but seeing the team pray and do devotions together drew her in. She calls that moment a turning point. “I felt like it was a revelation. I was going to be here not just for school but also for rugby and for the people I met.” The team became her home and her support system, especially as she wrestled with choosing between aviation and engineering. She still remembers one professor who went above and beyond while she was a professional flight major. “I told him my classwork felt too easy. He said, ‘I do not think you need more classes. I think you need to go to the hangar and ask for a job to get exposed.’ He even talked to a supervisor for me,” she said. Working in the hangar helped her decide she wanted the engineering path and ultimately led her to mechanical engineering. Alongside her team and professors, she has learned to value the university’s counseling support too. “Where I come from, there is a stereotype about counseling. But taking initiative to go really helped me.” Now a sophomore, Mwanahawa is the kind of student who embraces every part of campus life, whether she is joining I-House friends for shopping trips, reading novels in her free time, or watching students dive into Humans vs. Zombies with full commitment. She hopes incoming students will take risks early on, because that is how she found her closest friends. “Do not be scared to introduce yourself. Putting yourself out there is the solution,” she said. Looking back, she is proud of how much she has grown in only two years. “Sometimes you have to take a chance on yourself,” she said. “There is hope if you take a chance on yourself.”
