 Fidel Medina (SIS/Kogod, BA 04) at the Great Wall of China |
International Awards
AU Students Garner Prestigious Fellowships and Study Abroad Grants
WITH 42 FINALISTS IN 2005, AU has placed more students into the Presidential Management Fellowship (PMF) program than any other college or university in the country. The highly competitive program places outstanding individuals from a variety of academic backgrounds in federal service positions. For example, Paige Krause (WCL 05) accepted a position at the Department of Homeland Security and Brooke Spitzer (SIS/MA 05) has a fellowship at the Department of the Navy.
While PMF awardees complete their fellowships at various federal agencies in the United States, a tremendous number of AU students have garnered national grants for study abroad. Indeed, just as they have responded enthusiastically to AU Abroads significantly increased number of programs (see page 2), AU students have applied for and won numerous award competitions. With 13 David L. Boren Graduate Fellows in 200506, AU ranks first in the country in this highly selective competition, which supports U.S. students studying in non-Western and/or developing countries. A variant of this award, the David L. Boren Undergraduate Scholarship, is supporting four AU undergraduates studying abroad in 200506.
Boren Fellows will use their scholarships in a wide range of international settings. Jenny Presswalla (SIS/MA 05) will travel to Mumbai, India to explore the effect of U.S. visa policy on decisions by Indian graduate students to study in the United States. Benjamin Goldstein (SIS/MA) will be in Nicaragua and Costa Rica investigating the recent international coffee market crisis and its impact on land use in Central America.
Forrest Dunbar (SIS/BA 06), who studied abroad in Tokyo on a Boren Scholarship this past year, was also named a 2005 Harry S. Truman Scholar. The award provides $30,000 for graduate studies leading to a public service career.
AU students have received an array of other awards that will take them overseas. Through a Freeman Foundation scholarship, Fidel Medina (SIS/Kogod, BA 04) received full funding for an M.Phil. he began this past fall in the Faculty of Oriental Studies at the University of Cambridge in England. A portion of this program is taught in Beijing. Kevin Wadzuk (SPA/BA 06) earned a Killam Fellowship to study at York University in Canada for the full academic year (see page 9 for additional information).
With funding from the Fulbright Program, Carey Myers (CAS/BA 05) will conduct research on novel penicillins at the University of Limerick in Ireland. Colleen Kohashi (SIS/BA 05) and Brian Kim (SIS/BA 05) will complete English language teaching assistantships in South Korea. Seven other AU students also received 2005-06 Fulbright awards to study in countries from Germany to Brazil.
For more information about these and other grants, contact Paula Warrick, director of the Office of Merit Awards, at warrick@american.edu.
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