University Communications
Emory University
Atlanta, GA 30322

Release date: Nov. 8, 1999
Contact: Elaine Justice, Assistant Director, 404-727-0643, or ejustic@emory.edu

Undergraduates Pursue In-depth Projects Through International Scholars Program

Little could Emory senior Danielle Sered have known that a class visit from Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney her freshman year would lead her on an excursion to Ireland this past summer to interview a dozen women poets. Thanks to a new International Scholars program offered by Emory College, a delighted Sered spent nine weeks in Ireland this summer doing interviews for her honors thesis on the poet Medbh McGuckian and future graduate studies in Irish women writers in general. Special Collections in Emory's Woodruff Library has purchased her transcripts to add to its extensive contemporary Irish poets archive, and several Irish presses have expressed interest in publishing her interviews in book format.

Sered is part of a new effort by the college to broaden and deepen undergraduates' study abroad experience. Each year five to eight students may apply for stipend grants of $3,000 to support in-depth independent study or research under the guidance of an Emory faculty mentor. In addition to Sered, International Scholars this year are pursuing projects ranging from a study of daily work and its effects on breastfeeding mothers in rural Costa Rica to life stories in framing the narrative self in Romania.

The International Scholars Program is a natural extension of the college's broad range of study abroad programs, says Howard Rollins, executive director of the Center for International Programs Abroad (CIPA). In 1999-2000 more than 550 Emory undergraduates are spending a semester, a summer or a year abroad in Emory and non-Emory programs in Austria, Mexico, Kenya, Costa Rica, France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Spain, United Kingdom, China, the Caribbean, Egypt, Bolivia, Korea, Czech Republic, Taiwan, Argentina, Ireland, Australia, Russia, Nambia and Botswana.

For more information contact Rollins at 404-727-2711, or hrollins@emory.edu.

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