News Release

Local angles: Raleigh

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UNC’s Kregor to study in Tajikistan
on $20,000 David L. Boren Scholarship

By KELLY OCHS
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL — Matthew Kregor, a rising senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has received a federally funded David L. Boren Scholarship, which provides up to $20,000 for a year of study abroad.

He was as one of 131 winners among 800 applicants nationwide for the award, which supports undergraduate study of languages, geographic areas and cultures that the government considers critical to national security.

The scholarship program chooses highly motivated individuals who wish to work in the national security arena, encouraging recipients to choose careers in the federal government. It sends recipients to areas the program says are not normally included in study-abroad programs.

Kregor, a political science and international studies major from Raleigh, will study the Tajik and Russian languages in Tajikistan, which was part of the former Soviet Union. He will attend Tajik State University throughout the 2005-2006 academic year, delaying his expected UNC graduation date from next May to December 2006 to fit in the experience.

"It’s been an honor to get it," said Kregor, who previously studied abroad in Russia and visited many European countries. "It’s not just my own personal gratification I’m working toward, but also a career goal. I think it’s a great opportunity."

The Boren requires that, within three years of the study abroad, recipients work for one year in the federal departments of Defense, Homeland Security or State, or in the intelligence community. Kregor will seek a post in with the State Department, in a U.S. Embassy in a foreign capital. After that, he will pinpoint his career goals based on his experiences through the Boren, he said.

The scholarship is part of the National Security Education Program, which Congress created in 1991 to improve national security by providing opportunities for citizens to learn about foreign cultures. The program is a nonprofit organization funded by the Defense Department. David L. Boren, president of the University of Oklahoma, wrote the bill that established the program when he was a U.S. Senator, from 1979 to 1994.

Since the first Borens were awarded in 1994, UNC winners have studied in countries including Japan, Turkey, India and Egypt. Tajikistan’s remoteness and limited contact with the Western world are part of what attracted Kregor to the country.

"Matt is an outstanding student here," said Dr. George Lensing, director of the UNC Office of Distinguished Scholarships. "He will make a splendid ambassador as an American student studying in a part of the world where Americans are really hardly ever seen."

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(Ochs is a rising senior journalism and mass communications major from Winston-Salem.)

Photo link: http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/students/kregor_matt.jpg

Note: Kregor can be reached this summer at (919) 264-0308 or mkregor@email.unc.edu

Scholarship contact: National Security Education Program, 1-800-618-NSEP or nsep@iie.org, www.iie.org/nsep

News Services contact: L.J. Toler, (919) 962-8589