Two Johns Hopkins undergraduates, Carly Greenspan and Milonee Mehta, were recently awarded Boren Scholarships, which support the study of languages and areas of the world deemed critical to the future security of the United States.
Each scholar receives up to $20,000 for an academic year abroad and has a one-year obligation to work in government service after graduation.
Greenspan, a sophomore double majoring in international studies and anthropology, will use her scholarship to spend the 2014–2015 academic year studying in Amman, Jordan. She is the president of the Johns Hopkins chapter of J Street U and and the regional co-chair for J Street National, an advocacy group that supports a diplomatic resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Her professional ambition is a permanent post in the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.
Mehta, a freshman double majoring in chemical & biomolecular engineering and mathematics, spent six weeks in Istanbul during the summer of 2011 as a participant in the National Security Language Initiative for Youth. She will use her award for three weeks of study at a language institute and six weeks of Turkish language study and two STEM classes at Bogacizi University in Istanbul. She hopes to one day work for the Army Corps of Engineers. Mehta intends to develop methods of purifying and distributing water through energy-efficient techniques, which she would implement in the arid Euphrates Valley.
Boren Scholarships are funded by the National Security Education Program and are named after David L. Boren, a longtime U.S. Senator for Oklahoma who authored the National Security Education Act. Boren currently serves as the 13th president of the University of Oklahoma.
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