CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - In separate federal competitions, seven Illinois students cumulatively earned more than $80,000 in scholarship awards to fund their studies abroad as part of a U.S. government effort to expand the number of Americans studying and mastering critical languages.
Hristo Alexiev, a graduate student from Spring, Texas, will use his $21,200 Boren Fellowship to study Turkish and conduct research at Boaziçi University in Turkey. Andrew Barr, a junior from Mount Prospect, Ill., won a $10,000 Boren Scholarship and will study Arabic at the University of Jordan in Amman during the fall 2012 semester. Chris Olen, of Naperville, Ill., will travel to Beijing and Shanghai to study Mandarin during the spring and summer of 2013. Olen is a senior; his Boren Scholarship is for $20,000.
Boren awards, part of the National Security Education Program, provide funds for exceptional undergraduate and graduate students to study non-traditional languages around the world. Boren scholars pledge to seek employment with the Department of State, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, or the intelligence community after graduation.
The Illinois undergraduate recipients were among 161 scholarship recipients from a national pool of 1,014 applicants. One hundred nineteen Boren Fellowships were awarded to graduate students from among 575 applications. The awards are named for David Boren, the president of the University of Oklahoma. He was a U.S. senator and principal author of the legislation that created the National Security Education Program.
Alexiev, a native of Bulgaria, moved to the U.S. in 1998 with his family. He is an Illinois master's candidate in Russian, East European and Eurasian studies. At Boaziçi, he will focus his thesis studies on the regional role Turkey plays in the balance of interethnic and minority relations in the Balkans and its historical roots.
Barr, a midshipman in the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps program, is majoring in political science and pursuing coursework in the Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security program at Illinois, concentrating his research on suicide terrorism. He is active with the Illinois Model United Nations Team and as a contributor of foreign affairs articles and research to several think tanks.
Olen, a double major in political science and Spanish, seeks to investigate the ramifications of the interactions between the private sector in China and the Chinese government. Olen has served as a research assistant at the Cline Center for Democracy at the U. of I. and is also active with Model United Nations.
Additionally, four Illinois students earned U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarships to fully fund overseas language study. Undergraduates or current graduate students who study Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bangla/Bengali, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Punjabi, Russian, Turkish, or Urdu may use these scholarships. Nationally, 12 percent of applicants received a Critical Languages Scholarship.
Recipients will spend seven to 10 weeks in immersive language institutes this summer in 14 nations where these languages are spoken. The CLS Program provides fully funded, group-based intensive language instruction and structured cultural enrichment experiences.
The recipients:
Andrew Dolinar, a junior from Evanston, Ill., will continue his Russian studies in Kazan, Russia. A James Scholar honors student, Dolinar is a double major in sociology and Russian, East European, and Eurasian studies who also worked to promote cross cultural interactions as a programming adviser in the residential life program at Illinois.
Dana Fager, of Oak Park, Ill., a recent graduate in international studies, earned her second consecutive CLS award and will again be studying Japanese in Kyoto, Japan. She has spent a year studying in Japan. On campus, Fager was a member of the Campus Honors Program, a peer adviser in the Study Abroad Office, and vice president of the Global Studies Leaders.
Jeffrey Harmon, of Naperville, Ill., will be studying Mandarin in Beijing. He is a senior in global studies who studied in China last fall and has been conducting ethnographic research pertaining to the increase of Chinese international students attending the University of Illinois.
Zachary Sell, of Milwaukee, has been offered a CLS to continue his Hindi studies in Jaipur, India. Sells is a doctoral student in history at Illinois.
The National and International Scholarships Program at Illinois assists students in applying for these and other nationally competitive awards.
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