National Scholarships Office: 11 UMD Gilman Scholars Will Study Abroad

In the last five years 118 UMD students received the Gilman Scholarship to study abroad during the spring or summer. During the spring and early summer 2016, Maryland's 11 newest Gilman scholars will study in Australia, Brazil, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Scotland, South Africa, and Spain. They represent a variety of majors from the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, the College of Arts and Humanities, the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, and the A. James Clark School of Engineering.

The Gilman Scholarship Program aims to diversify the kinds of students who study and intern abroad and the countries and regions where they go by offering awards to U.S. undergraduates who might otherwise not participate due to financial constraints. The program, sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State, is open to U.S. citizen undergraduate students who receive a Federal Pell Grant.

The Gilman program helps students with international interests achieve their academic and career goals. Mahesh Guda, a U.S. Army veteran formerly deployed in Afghanistan and a civil engineering major, will study next semester at the Universitat Politécnica de Valéncia in Spain. "The Gilman Scholarship," Mahesh states, "will allow me to prioritize academics while exposing me to international academic communities. This will give me a strong foundation for future work in different countries." Indeed Maryland's Gilman recipients have went on to win other awards such as the Fulbright, the Boren Scholarship, the Critical Language Scholarship, the DAAD (for study in Germany), and the Public Policy and International Affairs Fellowship.

The Gilman recipients for 2016 are:

Allexxus Farley-Thomas: Architecture
Mahesh Guda: Mechanical Engineering
Van Hoang: Bioengineering
Christopher Howard: Japanese
Joey Hurm: Chemical Engineering
Sami Khan: Civil Engineering
Lorraine Makanyama: Psychology
Yue Ou: Civil Engineering
Olivia Pettingill: Criminal Justice and French
Laura Saldana: Psychology and Spanish
Simone Frazer: Letters and Sciences