Nine students from Portland State University are heading abroad as recipients of international cultural scholarships: the Fulbright Student Program, David L. Boren Scholarship and Fellowship Award, and the Critical Language Scholarship.
The Fulbright program provides grants for individually designed study/research projects or for English Teaching Assistant Programs. During their grants, Fulbrighters meet, work, live with and learn from the people of their host country, sharing daily experiences
Boren Scholarships are for undergraduate students to study less commonly taught languages in world regions critical to U.S. interests that are underrepresented in study abroad programs. These include Africa, Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Eurasia, Latin America, and the Middle East.
The Critical Language Scholarship Program is a summer overseas language and cultural immersion program for American undergraduate and graduate students.
Fulbrights:
Emily Lipski – Ecuador
Emily graduated from Portland State in 2013 with a Bachelor’s of Arts in Spanish and Science. Since graduating, she lived and volunteered in Ecuador where she connected with Range of Motion Project (ROMP), a nonprofit/for-impact organization that provides prosthetic devices to individuals in developing nations who would not receive them otherwise. Her experience working with ROMP illuminated her interest in the dynamic world of orthotics and prosthetics. As a Fulbright researcher she will return to Ecuador to assess the mobility potential of Ecuadorian amputees and help improve the physical potential of this population through data collection and improved technologies. Her work will also contribute to enhanced funding opportunities for amputee research. She plans to pursue a graduate program to become a prosthetist in the academic year of 2017.
Olivia Loveland - Turkey
Olivia is graduating with a B.A. in Political Science (International Development track) and Spanish, with a Turkish minor. She first became interested in learning languages when she was a Rotary Youth Exchange Student in Tres Arroyos, Argentina from 2011-2012. After gaining some confidence in learning a foreign language and with aspirations of working as a Foreign Service Officer, she decided to try studying a completely different language while at PSU (Turkish). After studying at Bogazici University in Istanbul summer 2015, she fell even more in love with the language and culture. She is excited to have another long-term cultural immersion experience and to improve upon her Turkish language skills while working as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant. She has previous experience as a volunteer summer school teacher through Catholic Charities serving the refugee community in SE Portland and is currently writing her undergraduate thesis on International Refugee Law. Olivia also ran cross-country and track for three years while at PSU.
Flannery Mack - Latvia
Flannery grew up in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her early experiences working with people across cultural boundaries through her family's involvement in refugee resettlement have blossomed into a lifelong passion for learning about and working with people from other cultures. Flannery is graduating from the Portland State Honors College this spring, with a B.A. in English and a minor in anthropology. She is the recipient of a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship in Latvia, where she plans to focus on creative uses and expressions of language, drawing on her knowledge of literature, poetry, and drama to provide content-based instruction to English learners. Upon her return, she hopes to get a Master’s in Public Health. She looks forward to continuing to work with refugee communities in the United States.
David L. Boren Scholarship and Fellowship Awards
Kelsey Canoy - Jordan
Kelsey an Arabic and Russian major in her third year of study at PSU. She started taking Arabic one summer, where she discovered her love of languages. More recently, she has been studying Russian, both independently and at PSU. She spent the summer of 2015 studying Arabic in Jordan and Oman. For the fall of 2016, Kelsey is excited to return to Amman to spend the year improving her language skills and eating at her favorite shawarma place.
Colton Hennick - Kazakhstan
Colton began to independently study Russian his sophomore year of high school and moved to Portland to be a part of the Russian Flagship Program at PSU. Colton studied abroad during the summer of 2014 in Georgia on the Critical Language Scholarship. He won the Critical Language Scholarship again in 2015 and spent the summer in Russia. Colton is excited to spend the academic year in Almaty, Kazakhstan, with two other students. He will graduate with a B.A. in Russian.
Critical Language Scholarships - Summer 2016
Megan Burns - Tanzania
Megan is a Community Development major and a senior in the Honors College. She grew up in Vancouver, Washington, and has lived in Portland for the past nine years. In 2013, she was the first community college recipient of a Boren Award. That, along with various other scholarships, allowed her to study Swahili in Tanzania. In the summer of 2015 she studied bicycle urbanism in Copenhagen, Denmark, funded by several scholarships. As a recipient of the Critical Language Scholarship for Swahili, Megan will spend the summer of 2016 in Arusha, Tanzania, studying Swahili, business and entrepreneurship at the MT Training Centre for Development Cooperation. She currently works in Portland as an engagement manager for the public involvement firm Design+Culture Lab. After graduation, she intends on utilizing her Swahili language skills, as well as the skills she has gained in her current position, to begin a career in sustainable international development.
Michael Farr - Russia
Michael is a post-baccalaureate student in the PSU Russian Flagship Program. Michael, whose grandmother is Russian, began learning the language on his own and with a private tutor while he was in the Army. After leaving the service in 2014, he moved back to his home state of Oregon and began investigating ways to further his studies. He was drawn to the Flagship program due to its connection to the Department of Defense, its intensive nature and career-oriented focus. Michael will travel to Russia in Summer 2016 on a Critical Languages Scholarship to study at the KORA Center for Russian Language Study in Vladimir. He hopes to eventually use his language skills in the national security field or return to his journalism roots to work as a foreign correspondent.
Chase Riegel - Russia
Chase has always been interested in becoming fluent in a foreign language. With a seemingly constant interest in Russia and Russian culture, he chose to learn Russian and it has become the driving force in his life. He started studying Russian with a private tutor during his last few years of high school and started taking Russian courses at PCC after he graduated. From there he was introduced to PSU's Russian Flagship Program and immediately knew that it was for him. Chase studied Russian for two months in Vladimir, Russia, on the CLS Program in 2015, and was astonished and delighted to be given another chance to do the same this year. Although his career goals are still developing, Chase knows he wants a career that will allow him to speak Russian on a daily basis.
Amber Shore - Russia
Amber is earning a double major in Russian and Applied Linguistics at PSU. After earning an AA in her home state of Washington, she spent three years working and saving. When she found the Russian Flagship Program at PSU, she enrolled to pursue her passion for studying language in general and Russian specifically. With hard work and the support of the program faculty, she won the Critical Language Scholarship and will be studying this summer in Vladimir, Russia. After graduation, she is interested in working in diplomacy or with an international NGO.