News Release

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Local Angle: Columbus, N.C.

Katelyn Love to study in Syria
on federally-funded scholarship

CHAPEL HILL - Katelyn Love, a rising junior 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.

She was as one of 141 winners among 720 students nationwide who applied for the award, which supports undergraduate study of languages, geographic areas and cultures that the government considers important 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.

Love, a political science and international studies major from Columbus, N.C., will study for a year in Syria at the French Institute of Arab Studies of Damascus. The school's classes are taught in Arabic, which Love said will help her toward her goal of becoming fluent in the language. She has studied Arabic since her freshman year at Carolina.

"It's really an immersion experience," said Love, who also speaks French, Estonian and Spanish and has studied in France, Estonia and Jordan.

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. Love's possible career goals include working as a political analyst or translator.

"I want to do something in international relations," she said. "Hopefully going to Syria will help me refine what I want to do."

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, a post he held from 1979 to 1994.

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Photo URL: http://www.unc.edu/news/pics/students/love_katelyn.jpg

Note: Love can be reached at (864) 357-3335 or klove@email.unc.edu

Office of Distinguished Scholarships contact: Dr. George Lensing, (919) 843-7764, lensing@email.unc.edu
News Services contact: L.J. Toler, (919) 962-8589, laura_toler@unc.edu