Four New College of Florida Students Complete Gilman Scholarships Abroad

(May 18, 2010) As the 2009-10 academic year draws to a close, four students at New College of Florida will be returning to the United States from study abroad as recipients of Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships awarded by the U.S. Department of State.  Twelve New College students have received the prestigious Gilman Scholarships over the past five years.

Here’s the list of New College’s Gilman Scholars for 2009-10:

Hope Reynolds, a second-year student from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was in Morocco studying Arabic for the entire 2009-2010 academic year. She received additional funds from the Gilman Program’s Critical Need Language Fund to study a language that is important to U.S. diplomacy.

Maia Delacalle, a third-year student from Miami, Florida, studied in Argentina for the spring semester.  Juliana Nalerio, a third-year from West Palm Beach, Florida, traveled to Uruguay for the spring semester, and Anamica Bedi, a third-year student from Columbia Heights, Minnesota, went to Brazil this spring.

“The last two months for me have been travel intensive,” writes Bedi. “I have contracted digestive virus, bacterial infections, ant bites and more mosquito bites than I care to remember! Guess what? It does not matter because I am in the Amazon! Nothing can take back what I have seen and what I have seen is nature at it highest. There is so much to see and so much to learn about in the Brazilian Amazon that there is no doubt I will conduct research here during grad school. I am already making contacts at the Universidade Federal do Pará. I am so ridiculously lucky.”

Sponsored by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program was created in 2000 to provide scholarships for study abroad to U.S. undergraduates with financial need, including students from diverse backgrounds and students going to non-traditional study abroad destinations. The congressionally funded program is administered by the Institute of International Education.

For more information on the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship program, visit the U.S. State Department’s website at http://exchanges.state.gov/globalexchanges/index.html

For more information, please contact the Office of Public Affairs at (941) 487-4153 or email [email protected].