Two Oglethorpe students, Claudine Niyonsenga ’20 and Yana Timoshenko ’20, have received the prestigious and selective Benjamin A. Gilman Scholarship to study abroad during the 2019 spring semester.

The U.S. Department of State annually awards grants of up to $5,000 to deserving students to assist with international education.

Niyonsenga, a Business Administration major, will attend the Council On International Educational Exchange (CIEE) Open Campus program, where she will earn credits in three cities and countries: Buenos Aires, Argentina; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and Santiago, Chile.

Timoshenko, an International Studies major, will spend the semester at Oglethorpe’s exchange partner university in Buenos Aires, the University of Belgrano.

Niyonsenga and Timoshenko follow other recent scholarship awardees Deidre Irby ’16, Gracie Gallegos ’18, and Ciaran Flake ’18.

“I am proud to say that these two young women are the 4th and 5th awardees of the scholarship since I began to serve as director of global education in the fall of 2014,” said Dr. Ron Bobroff, faculty director, Global Education, Atlanta Laboratory for Learning (A_LAB).

Previously, only two other Oglethorpe students had received the scholarship: Shanequa Shuler in 2006 and Tiffany Hatfield in 2005.

The Gilman Scholarship Program broadens the student population that studies and interns abroad by supporting undergraduates who might not otherwise participate due to financial constraints. The program encourages students to study and intern in a diverse array of countries and world regions and encourages them to study languages, especially critical need languages deemed important to national security. By supporting undergraduate students who have high financial need, the program has been successful in supporting students who have been historically underrepresented in education abroad.