GS students are known for their outstanding academic achievements, and this summer proves to be no exception. Several GS students are pursuing foreign studies this upcoming year—many of them abroad—and have been awarded prestigious fellowships and scholarships to cover a large portion of their costs.
"These are competitive awards with significant stipends, and it is very gratifying to see increasing numbers of GS students awarded these prestigious scholarships in recent years," Senior Assistant Dean Vanessa Karahalios said.
Andrew King and Matthew Lalor are two of only 610 students nationwide, chosen from a pool of 5,000 applicants, to receive a 2013 Critical Language Scholarship. This highly selective award, which is given by the U.S. Department of State, seeks to expand the number of Americans studying critical foreign languages by fully funding intensive summer language instruction abroad. All program costs are covered by the scholarship, including travel, room, board, and program fees.
Lalor is spending two months in Eastern Java, Indonesia, where he will study the language at the Universitas Negeri Malang and participate in small community service projects. King will travel to Bursa, Turkey, where he will stay with a host family, spend time exploring the city with native speakers, and devote five hours a day to studying Turkish at Ankara University.
Rachel Cruz also finds herself among a select group of students, as one of 700 recipients nationwide chosen from a pool of more than 2,700 applicants to receive a summer 2013 scholarship from the Gilman International Scholarship Program, which aims to encourage students to choose non-traditional study abroad destinations.
Cruz has a full summer planned, beginning with a five-week trip to Jordan as part of the Columbia University SEE-U program, after which she will use her Gilman Scholarship to study in Beirut, Lebanon, where she will pursue an independent study through her major department and study Arabic at the Saifi Institute. She will also complete an internship at Portal9, a literary journal that publishes writing and photography about urbanism and the city.
Catherine Austin will also be studying Turkish when she travels to Istanbul this summer as part of a joint program in its pilot year between Columbia and Boğaziçi University, in Istanbul, Turkey, in which she will be taking classes on Byzantine art and history. In addition to the Columbia program, she plans to enroll in a local night course to work on her language skills. Austin was also the recipient of a 2013-2014 full-year FLAS Fellowship, which covers part of her tuition at Columbia as she continues studying the Middle East region and the study of the Turkish language while pursuing a major in human rights.
To learn more about available fellowships, visit the GS fellowships section of this website. To learn more about study abroad options available to students, visit the Office of Global programs website.
2013-2014 GS Award Recipients
Critical Language Scholarship
Andrew King
Matthew Lalor
Gilman Scholarship
Rachel Cruz
Hallen Korn
Brittne Rivera
FLAS Fellowship
Catherine Austin
Jason Mann
