[302] Gilman Scholarship Propels MTSU Students To Europe, Asia

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Feb. 7, 2011
EDITORIAL CONTACT: Gina Logue, 615-898-5081

GILMAN SCHOLARSHIP PROPELS MTSU STUDENTS TO EUROPE, ASIA
Franklin, Sevierville Natives Venture to Far-off Lands to Learn Language, Culture

(MURFREESBORO) – Barbara Corley and Anna Yacovone are MTSU’s spring 2011 recipients of the prestigious Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships. Corley is using her $5,000 stipend to study abroad in Romania, while Yacovone is using her $2,000 allocation to study in Thailand.
Corley, a 30-year-old philosophy major who grew up in Franklin and now lives in Nashville, says the folklore, music and dance of the Transylvanian region intrigue her. A professional dancer and dance teacher for seven years, she has taken students to Brazil and Argentina to teach them about different types of dances.
“The woman (I’m) living with speaks absolutely no English, and she has been with a Romanian folk dancing group for about 20 years,” Corley says. “I didn’t want to be on campus with a bunch of students speaking English. I wanted to struggle.”
She found her in-country host through an intermediary. Corley says she understands that, like her, the Romanian host likes to talk with her hands. That skill might come in handy since Corley wears hearing aids in both ears due to a condition called otosclerosis, the abnormal growth of bone near the middle ear.
Corley is attending Universitatea Babes-Bolyai in the city of Cluj-Napoca, where her class schedule includes Romanian, French, Eastern European history and policymaking. She’s considering a variety of post-graduation options, including working for a museum, a library or a government agency involved with information collection.
“I’m not going to be a professional philosopher,” she says. “I’m simply using those roots of thinking and writing and understanding the world as ways to filter everything I’ll be learning—and the same with dance.”
Meanwhile, the 21-year-old Yacovone is studying Thai culture and language at Thammasat University in Bangkok, living in an off-campus apartment and sending occasional dispatches to her hometown newspaper, The Mountain Press of Sevierville.
Yacovone says she had a difficult time deciding whether to go to Thailand or Estonia, the home country of her maternal great-aunt and grandfather. She settled on Thailand because it has a warmer climate and seems to offer more adventure, but she intends to make it to Estonia one day.
Winning the Gilman Scholarship could not have been more fortuitous for Yacovone, who had to cobble together money from different sources to realize her goal.

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“I worked two jobs this summer,” Yacovone says. “Though it was backbreaking, it helped me save a little for cushion room just in case the Gilman didn’t come through. Luckily, too, Thailand’s very inexpensive, so you can get by with very little.”
In addition, Yacovone benefitted from an MTSU study-abroad scholarship, an Honors College scholarship and contributions from a family friend.
A senior majoring in global studies and organizational communication, Yacovone studied in Italy two summers ago. She was well versed in the options available through her work as a peer adviser in the MTSU Office of Education Abroad and Student Exchange. But she cautions interested students not to presume that study-abroad is a vacation in the guise of education.
“I think people underestimate just how intense study-abroad is,” she says.
In fact, Yacovone says she is looking forward to coming home “a different person.” Whoever she is when she returns, she says she will consider a wealth of post-graduation options ranging from graduate school to the Peace Corps.
Funded by Congress and sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the Gilman Scholarship program provides “grants for U.S. citizen undergraduate students of limited financial means to pursue academic studies abroad,” states the program’s Web site.
Recipients are selected competitively for these grants, which are used for such expenses as “program tuition, room and board, books, local transportation, insurance and international airfare.”
To find out more about MTSU’s study abroad opportunities, contact the MTSU Office of Education Abroad and Student Exchange at 615-898-5179 or mtabroad@mtsu.edu. To learn more about the Gilman Scholarships, go to www.iie.org/gilman.


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ATTENTION, MEDIA: For jpeg photos of Gilman Scholarship recipients Barbara Corley and Anna Yacovone, contact Gina Logue in the MTSU Office of News and Media Relations at 615-898-5081 or gklogue@mtsu.edu.


Founded in 1911, Middle Tennessee State University is a Tennessee Board of Regents institution located in Murfreesboro and is the state’s largest public undergraduate institution. MTSU now boasts one of the nation’s first master’s degree programs in horse science, and the Council of Graduate Schools in Washington, D.C., acclaims MTSU’s Master of Science in Professional Science degree—the only one in Tennessee—as a model program. Recently, MTSU unveiled three new doctoral degrees in the sciences.