• W.E. Manning Memorial Scholarship Recipient •

From Teaching Preschool Taekwondo to Earning an Online General Business Degree

Teaching Taekwondo to preschool children is no easy task. Just ask Sophia Kohlenberger Bazzi. Coaching these children on top of managing important business aspects of the martial arts studio, working another part-time job, and attending online university classes, she makes it all work.

“It is challenging, but I'm doing it for half of my life, so for me it's like second nature,” she said. “The discipline and the respect part of it, the determination and perseverance, that's all that I learned through Taekwondo that nowadays I teach to kids. It's pretty interesting when you see their progress from when they begin to when they're moving up to the bigger kids’ class. Teaching that age is pretty neat. They’re like sponges so they really get everything that you're teaching. It is very hard to detach from them when they graduate to the older kids’ class.”>

 Bazzi lives in Little Rock, where in addition to her online coursework, she works two jobs—in the morning at the admissions office of the U of A Pulaski Technical College and in the afternoons at All Star Martial Arts. She works hard to serve the students and families of her studio, known as a dojang. With 130 students at her location, ranging in age from 3 to 63, Bazzi spends her afternoons managing the enrollment contracts, ordering merchandise, and following up on potential leads and prospects.

“I've been teaching Taekwondo since I'm 16, but asking people to sign a contract for two or three years, that was so hard for me,” she said. “But I'm very natural at it, so I wanted to get a diploma that backs up the experience that I have managing people. It is a lot of customer service. What really made me want to earn a business degree is the job that I already had.”

 Bazzi began taking Taekwondo lessons at age 3 in her birth country of Brazil; then, after moving to Arkansas at age 18, she turned the martial arts discipline into a lifelong career. Now, at 29, she has focused the intense discipline and guiding principles of her martial art into graduating in December 2025 with a BSBA in General Business at the University of Arkansas. She plans to someday open her own Taekwondo dojang.

“It was always my plan, of course, to go to college, even back in Brazil,” Bazzi said. “When I had the opportunity to come to United States to pursue the sport, I couldn't let that pass by. I'm a fifth-degree black belt in Taekwondo, and I'm a program director. I became interested in sales when I started managing the Taekwondo school where I work. After I got my green card, it was a no brainer that I wanted to go to the Walton College of Business.”

Even though she has access to several in-person institutions in Little Rock, Bazzi chose the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. She was impressed by Walton College’s No. 1 and No. 2 rankings by Gartner for its supply chain management undergraduate and graduate programs, respectively.

Bazzi credits her ability to juggle so many responsibilities to a careful attention to time management. Her main points were to give herself time to plan, write down a plan, watch for opportunities to improve the plan, and pay attention to the plan.

“You can dream things, but if you don't write it down, it's not going to become a plan,” she said. “For me, it was very in my head that I had to write down what I'm going to do.”

 To make her life even more interesting, Bazzi will be taking time out of her busy work schedule this summer to study abroad in Rome. Fluent in three languages—Portuguese, Spanish and English—she is currently studying Italian to prepare for her trip to Italy.

“I got selected to do the study abroad for marketing in Rome, so this July I'm going there to study,” she said. “That was one of the reasons I chose U of A because I knew it had more opportunities for the study abroad. They do not offer international business online, so I basically did a general business and the international part of it that is learning a second language—well, I know three—and studying abroad, I got that.”

Her final piece of advice to students is to apply for scholarships. In her view, a few minutes of time could make a lot of difference in how much one spends out of their own pockets.

“Go after every possible scholarship, look at the website and see everything that I'm eligible to get, and take the time,” she advised. “I'm going to write my essay and be proud of it and make sure I explain all my situation.”

Following her own advice, Bazzi became a recipient of the W.E. Manning Memorial Scholarship for online U of A students for the 2024-2025 academic year. The scholarship began with small gifts from many people who passionately believe in the transformative power of education. It was created in 2018 to financially assist students who are enrolled in undergraduate and graduate online degree programs.

“For me it helps me so much,” Bazzi said. “When I went through major life changes during my last semester at Pulaski Tech, I had to ask, ‘Am I going to be able to do this at U of A online?’ I started working two jobs to be able to make it work. Having this scholarship helps me get some ease from my second part-time job. That gives me extra time to study for school. It really helped me to make this possible in the first place and gives me time to take care of my education. I don't go crazy by working two jobs and going full time at school. I want to say thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to get this scholarship in the first place and being able to make my dreams come true.”