From the International Programs Office

The Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship application cycle is currently open for study abroad programs beginning Fall 2009 and the 2009/2010 academic year.

The program offers grants for U.S. citizen undergraduate students of limited financial means to pursue academic studies abroad. This award helps to defray costs including program tuition, room and board, books, local transportation, insurance and international airfare.

Award amounts will vary depending on the length of study and student need with the average award being $4,000. Undergraduate students who are receiving federal Pell Grant funding at 2-year or 4-year colleges or universities are eligible to apply.

Students who apply for and receive the Gilman Scholarship to study abroad are now eligible to receive an additional $3,000 Critical Need Language Supplement from the Gilman Program for a total possible award of up to $8,000.

Critical Need Languages include:

• Arabic (all dialects)
• Chinese (all dialects)
• Turkic (Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Kyrgz, Turkish, Turkmen, Uzbek)
• Persian (Farsi, Dari, Kurdish, Pashto, Tajiki)
• Indic (Hindi, Urdu, Nepali, Sinhala, Bengali, Punjabi, Marathi, Gujarati, Sindhi)
• Korean
• Russian

This congressionally funded program is sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State and is administered by the Institute of International Education -- Southern Regional Center in Houston, Texas.
For further information or to apply, please go to http://www.iie.org/programs/gilman/overview/overview.html