Scholarships & Awards

Recognizes the most outstanding IAS graduate every year – minimum $1500 cash award; applications due February 1st.

Click here for more information and application.

Supports student travel to underrepresented overseas destinations – variable awards depending on student costs; applications due February 1st.
Click here for more information and application.

The School of International and Area Studies at the University of Oklahoma announces a contest for the best paper that addresses any aspect of conflict resolution, affecting any country that borders the Mediterranean Sea. Any OU graduate or undergraduate student is eligible to compete for the award. Submissions can be prepared especially for this competition, or they can be based on term papers, Honors research projects, or graduate theses.

This award is named for Thomas W. Adams, a former officer in the US State Department who has published extensively on the conflict between Turks and Greeks on the island of Cyprus.

Submission Guidelines:
Submissions should be at least 2500 words in length. They should be typed, double-spaced and include a complete bibliography of cited works. Submissions are due no later than 15 April 2009. Awards will be announced 1 May 2009. All submissions will be evaluated by a committee of faculty. The award recipient will receive $750.00 and a plaque commemorating their accomplishment.

For questions or inquiries, please contact Dr. Mitchell Smith, Dale Hall Tower 205 mps@ou.edu.

$500 for a research paper on Latin American Studies!!!

• Open to undergraduate majors and minors in the School of International and Area Studies.
• $500 will go to the best paper on any Latin American topic. Papers should show originality of research, argument, method, writing, and insight.
• Papers will be archived and may be used in professional scholarly work.
• Papers must be at least 15 pages, typed, and double-spaced. Papers originally written for classes are eligible.
• Submission deadline is 20 December 2009. One hard copy of the paper must be submitted in Prof. Alan McPherson’s box in Hester Hall 106 and an electronic copy must be sent to mcpherson@ou.edu.  Remember to include how to reach you!
• Best research paper will be announced in spring 2010.

The Percy Buchanan Award was created by Professor Sidney Brown, emeritus professor of Japanese History. The award is named in honor of Percy Buchanan, another former OU professor of Asian Studies who inspired many students during his teaching career. Many former students of Professors Buchanan and Brown have contributed to the endowment that makes this award possible. We would like to express a heartfelt thanks to all those generous donors.

The Percy Buchanan Scholarship is awarded annually to the most deserving student in the School of International and Area Studies, specializing in Asian Studies. Individuals may be nominated by the faculty in the department. The amount of the award is $1000 for 2006.

This program, also known as the National Security Education Program (NSEP) enables U.S. graduate or undergraduate students to pursue overseas specialization in area and language study and was created by then Senator David L. Boren in 1991. Specifically, Boren Scholarships (for undergraduate students) and Fellowships (for graduate students) provide financial support to study languages, cultures, and world regions that are deemed critical to U.S. national security but are less frequently studied by U.S. students. Areas of the world that are never eligible for the NSEP are Western Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and languages such as Spanish, French, German, etc.

While language focus is always changing, examples of recently awarded language programs have been in Chinese, Arabic and Turkish. All participating students must be concurrently participating in an academic program at the time of participation as an NSEP scholar. Limited to U.S. citizens, this program has a federal government service agreement attached to the award and would require work by the recipient at an approved federal position after completion.

For further information about this program and an exhaustive list of focused languages and service sites, please go to this website: www.borenawards.org
Also, please feel free to contact the OU campus representative for NSEP: Jack Hobson jhobson@ou.edu