Five UGA undergraduates offered Boren Scholarships in 2023

The Boren Scholarships are designed to add important international and language components to students’ educations by giving them the opportunity to study overseas in world regions critical to U.S. interests. The national initiative is administered by the Institute of International Education on behalf of the National Security Education Program. Boren recipients commit to working in the federal government for at least one year after graduation in exchange for up to $25,000 in funding.

Our colleagues in the Honors program report that, for the third year in a row, the Boren Awards named the University of Georgia a top-performing institution for Boren Scholarships. With five UGA undergraduates selected as Boren Scholars this spring, UGA is ranked in the top five of institutions nationwide:

The UGA students named as Boren Scholars for 2023 will study three different languages—Arabic, Swahili and Russian—in three distinct regions of the world.

UGA has had 94 Boren Scholarship and Fellowship offers to date, and 57 in the last 10 years. The university was also named a top-performing institution for Boren Scholarships in 2021 and 2022.

“Our students are excelling at critical language studies, and we are proud to be among the top institutions for Boren Scholarships,” said Meg Amstutz, dean of the Morehead Honors College. “I am grateful for the support of their faculty and the Office of Global Engagement. The university continues to develop global citizens through its strong commitment to the study of critical languages.”

In 2023, 210 undergraduates across the country received Boren Scholarships, and 108 graduate students received Boren Fellowships. The selected Boren Scholars and Fellows intend to study in 43 countries—with the top countries being Taiwan, Kazakhstan, Jordan, Japan, Morocco, South Korea, Tanzania and Brazil. They will study 33 different languages; the most popular languages include Mandarin, Arabic, Russian, Portuguese, Korean, Swahili, Turkish, Japanese and Indonesian.

Kudos to faculty and staff in Franklin College units who work to provide instruction opportunities in Arabic (department of religion), Swahili (the department of comparative literature and intercultural studies), Russian (department of Germanic and Slavic studies), and Portuguese (Latin American and Caribbean Studies), as well many other languages. It truly takes a village to maintain this robust roster of language instruction each and every semester, and that village is the Franklin College.

Congratulations to these students and the faculty who mentor, teach, and guide them.

Image: UGA's 2023 Boren Scholars include, left to right, Zakiya McPherson, Siminette Kolodka, Caroline Solomon and Catherine Grizzard. Not pictured is Mariah Cady. (Photo by Stephanie Schupska)