Students in the News

FIRST UD STUDENT TO WIN BOREN SCHOLARSHIP IS INS MAJOR!

Boren Scholar (from http://artssciences.udayton.edu/News/-+Detail/?contentId=24807)

A University of Dayton student is the recipient of a prestigious scholarship that allows him to study abroad in a region critical to U.S. national security.

Zac Sideras spent the winter 2009 term at Birzeit University in the West Bank. Here, he stands inside the wall around the Palestinian city of Qalqilyia. "It completely surrounds the entire village, except for the entrance corridor," Sideras said.

May 8, 2009 - As a Boren Scholarship winner, senior Zac Sideras will receive $10,000 from the Institute of International Education to study Arabic at American University in Cairo during the fall 2009 semester. In addition to language education, Sideras will also take courses in Middle Eastern history and culture.

This will be the third study-abroad experience for Sideras, who is majoring in history and international studies. He recently returned from a semester at Birzeit University near Ramallah in the West Bank where he studied Arabic language, society, political science and history. During the summer of 2007, he studied at Al-Akhawayn University in Morocco.

This summer, he will work as an intern at the Palestine Center in Washington, D.C., an extension of the Jerusalem Fund that communicates information about the Palestinian political experience to American policy-makers, journalists, students and the general public.

"Until the United States has the capacity to understand the other cultures of the world — particularly in the Middle East — we will never have a successful foreign policy and national security policy," Sideras said. "There's only so much you can learn about the region before you have to actually go and experience it first hand."

After graduation, Sideras plans to attend a top graduate program in international studies and is considering a career in the U.S. State Department. As a Boren Scholar, he must work at least one year after graduation for the federal government in a position with national security responsibilities.

The Boren Scholarship is highly competitive. Students must be nominated by their home institution, and only 130 scholarships were awarded nationally out of 896 applications. Sideras is the first University of Dayton student to receive a Boren Scholarship.

"Traditionally, schools with strong foreign service programs such as Georgetown and George Washington have dominated these awards, so it's a great thing for the University of Dayton to get in the game," said John McCombe, associate director of the University Honors Program and the campus representative for the Boren Scholarship.

Boren Scholarships are funded by the National Security Education Program, which focuses on geographic areas, languages and fields of study deemed critical to U.S. national security. The NSEP's scope has expanded to include not only the traditional concerns of protecting and promoting American well-being, but also the challenges of global society, including sustainable development, environmental degradation, global disease, hunger, population growth, migration and economic competitiveness.

For more information about this article, contact: Cameron Fullam, assistant director of media relations, at 937-229-3256 or fullam@udayton.edu.

UD Story

Claire Yerke, '08

Claire Yerke's classroom is the world. Claire has studied in Ecuador, Chile and, now, Nicaragua as part of her University of Dayton education.

AFROTC cadets to be commissioned

Amy Tiedge

Staff Writer

Before accepting their diplomas next Sunday, three UD students will participate in a ceremony four years in the making.

That ceremony is the commissioning into the United States Air Force of Art Bull, Jason Meyer and Jessica Rapagnani. The three are cadets in the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps detachment 643 out of Wright State University. They will officially enter active duty May 5, 2007.

Bull, 22, of Centerville, Ohio, has been selected to enter undergraduate pilot training at Laughlin Air Force Base in Del Rio, Texas, next March. In the meantime, he will be on casual status at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base here in Dayton. Bull, who will receive a B.S. in computer information systems, said he joined ROTC as a second-semester freshman to fulfill a duty.

“I joined because I felt like it was the right thing to do,” he said. “Obviously, I wanted to fly planes, but I would have done any job. I just wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself.”

As for Meyer, 22, of Columbus, his first task after commissioning will be to marry his fiancée, Jennifer Bayer, a marketing major also of Columbus. After that, the couple will relocate to Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Barbara, Calif., where Meyer will serve the Air Force in space and missiles and acquisitions.

“ROTC has been a four-year learning experience,” Meyer said. “The whole thing has just made me a stronger and more confident person.”

Rapagnani, from St. Louis, who is double majoring in international studies and political science, will be relocating to Langley Air Force Base in Virginia to work in manpower and personnel. After completing four years in the ROTC program, this last year as the only female in the UD Air Force ROTC program, she said she wouldn’t have changed anything.

“Every leadership opportunity you’re given, if you succeed, you learn, and if you fail, you learn even more,” she said.

The commissioning ceremony will take place Saturday, May 5 at 1 p.m. in O’Leary Auditorium in Miriam Hall. The three cadets will each take an oath of service and receive the rank of second lieutenant. Meyer and Rapagnani will then be contracted for four years of military service, and Bull will owe ten years of service after pilot training to the Air Force.

“There is something very powerful about raising your right hand in front of a flag and pledging your life to something greater than yourself,” said Rapagnani, who says that the many young men and women in the program have become like a group of brothers, each cadet helping to lift the others up.

“It’s been challenging but rewarding,” said Bull. “It’s been a lot of long hours, but I’ve met some of the greatest people you could ever work with in three and a half years, so I’m excited to see what the rest of the program is like.”

Detachment 643 will also separately commission cadets from Wright State University and Cedarville University, each ceremony corresponding to that school’s graduation date.

According to the detachment, the AFROTC program the cadets have completed is intended to instruct students in military heritage, the development of air and space power, military ethics, drill and ceremonies, communication, human relations and leadership theory and techniques.

For more information, visit www.afrotcdet643.com.

Two UD seniors win national debate awards

Nikki Miller

News Editor

Two UD seniors recently proved themselves among the best collegiate debaters in the country after competing in the National Educational Debate Association’s national championship tournament at Ball State University April 13-14.

International studies major Andrew Navolio was named the first-place individual speaker in the nation along with receiving All-American recognition. Psychology and communication major and team president Wade Luckett was also named an All-American.