WWW.MARSHALL.EDU/FOUNDATION Nixing the Competition; Yeager Scholar Named Boren Award Recipient Sarah Nix learned about the Society of Yeager Scholars as a freshman in high school. An academic dean had discussed the program with her mother, who clipped a story out of the paper about the Society of Yeager Scholars and gave it to Sarah to read. “The Yeager program was always in the back of my mind, and I knew I wanted to study abroad, which was the deciding factor,” Sarah says. “There are scholarships that provide tuition, but there are none I have found like the Yeager, which provides opportunities for you to meet board members, travel the world, go on field trips and attend seminars.” A double major in International Affairs and Japanese, she is a member of the James and Verna Gibson Class of 2018. Benefiting from the seminar experiences, Sarah enjoys meeting weekly with her classmates to learn about two different, separate disciplines. She explains the seminar as an opportunity to bond with her classmates and work together on assignments. “We are so different in terms of majors we are trying to accomplish and the things that we are trying to do, but this is one of the most amazing support systems they could have put together,” Sarah says. Speaking of her classmates, she adds, “I know their lives and I’ve met their families; obviously, we are going to stay in touch after college.” Sarah is determined to stay in contact with her classmates this coming academic year as she was recently named a recipient of the Boren Award, which will enable her to spend her junior year studying at Kansai Gaidai in Japan. She will take courses in both of her majors. Sponsored by the Institute of International Education, the Boren Award promotes long-term linguistic and cultural immersion. It focuses on geographic areas, languages and fields of study deemed critical to United States National Security. The award provides up to $20,000 for two semesters abroad. This year, 820 applicants vied for 165 awards. During the two to three month long application process, Sarah was required to choose from the specific list of countries in which she wanted to study, calculate necessary spending for a year, write an essay and collect letters of recommendation from her professors. Upon graduation, she is expected to work for the federal government for at least a year. Sarah learned about the Boren Award when researching opportunities to study abroad. Mallory Carpenter, the program manager for national scholarships at Marshall, worked with Sarah to find study abroad scholarship opportunities that would benefit her career. “She gave me a couple of options in terms of, here is something that could be good for this year, or here is the Boren. Mallory had me look over the requirements to make sure it is exactly what I wanted to do and it worked out,” Sarah explains. “The essay was broad. I started putting things together that I thought related to national security or jobs with the federal government, then I watched a couple of webinars that ripped my entire argument apart. They said, ‘here is what you do not want to do.’ I looked down on my desk and thought, ‘well, all right,’” Sarah says. She started thinking about her specific interests and the societal impacts, which prompted her to write her essay on the plight of refugees and immigrants. “I am from a refugee background in Afghanistan, where my parents adopted me. When I started looking at how the immigrant situation in Osaka, which is where I will be studying in Japan, is affected, I wrote an essay discussing potential careers that I was interested in pertaining to this situation and the research I wanted to do while I was overseas,” explains Sarah, who was notified she was named a Boren Award winner in April. Sarah says she will miss her seven Yeager classmates during her year abroad. “I am really going to miss having that support system because we are so close,” she said. “We have our differences, but I know I can find any of them, and they will be there to talk about my stress. It is daunting to think that I am going to be taking on an entire year without them because I only know that experience from college. I am comfortable at Marshall. I have built a life for myself. I know the administrators and professors and talk to them about opportunities and my classes. I am going to tackle a completely new environment in a new language.” Crediting the Yeager program for increasing her leadership skills and embracing differences, Sarah believes working with her classmates in seminars to figure out what they are good at and how to relate to them are what builds their close relationship; these assets will assist her as she studies abroad. “The Yeager program has allowed us to create a family and learn about each other in a way that we would not have gotten in a regular college experience anywhere,” she said. “Donors are not only giving me the financial way of getting through my college experience, but they are creating a comprehensive, tailored pathway to be a successful adult that I know I could not get at any other program right now in the United States. Thank you; the fact that this program exists means that I have been able to experience things that I would not give up for the world.”