Global scholarships for study abroad

The University of Delaware Institute for Global Studies has awarded over $557,000 in scholarships to help support the participation of 288 UD students in study abroad programs during the winter and spring 2012 semesters. A list of the scholarship winners is available at this website.The competitive scholarships, which include First Year Experience Study Abroad Scholarships (reserved for first-semester freshmen), Global Citizenship Awards and Global Scholars Awards, are awarded based on academic merit and financial need. All seven colleges at the University are represented by the awardees.“We congratulate our scholarship recipients and wish them well as they prepare for an experience that past participants have described as ‘life-changing’ in the most positive way,said Matthew Robinson, IGS director and professor of business administration.The University of Delaware is consistently recognized as a leader in study abroad, which is a testament to the dedicated faculty and staff who develop these programs and the students who participate in them.

According to Marie Gleason, IGS study abroad coordinator, currently 45 percent of the applicants who compete for the scholarships win funding. Awards range from $1,000 to $4,000 per person and help support the cost of participation. Students are required to submit a scholarship essay and a recommendation from a professor as part of the application.We are grateful to our benefactors for making IGS scholarship awards possible, providing the opportunity to study abroad for so many students,Gleason said.Study abroad participants take two courses, earning a total of 6–7 UD credits. The programs may focus on any one of dozens of academic topics, or they may couple academic programs or intensive language training with service learning projects.

Fifty programs are set for the coming 2012 Winter Session in locales ranging from Australia, where programs will focus on international finance to sports management, tourism, transportation engineering and women’s health issues, to the West Indies island of Dominica, where students will learn about the physical, social and economic factors involved in resource management and maintaining the island’s environmental quality.Among the new programs for the Winter Session, the Costa Rica First Year Experience, open only to first-semester freshmen and led by faculty director Basia Moltchanov, will engage students in both the Spanish language and the culture of this Latin American nation, as they study in the city of Heredia and live with local families.

In a program in Italy open only to UD Honors students and led by faculty director James Magee, students will explore the meaning and practice of democracy in a traditional academic course and then learn about global citizenship by volunteering at a site of their choosing, from homeless shelters, to environmental organizations, orphanages, hospitals, immigration services, charities and other institutions.Some students will embark on an exciting new program much closer to home on Capitol Hill sponsored by the Department of Political Science and International Relations and the School of Public Policy and Administration, and led by faculty director Edward Freel. In addition to taking an academic course on power and leadership in Washington, D.C., the students will gain a bird’s-eye view of the public policy process, interning at congressional offices, executive agencies and political or nonprofit organizations.