Four Maxwell Students Named Boren Fellows

Four Maxwell School students are recipients of the 2021 Boren Fellowship. Sponsored by the National Security Education Program, the fellowship funds immersive foreign language study abroad experiences for graduate students who plan to work in federal national security.

Recipient Courtney Blankenship will spend six months studying the Amazigh language, Tarifit, as a Boren Fellow in Morocco. The first-year master’s degree student in international relations (peace, security and conflict track) will live in the Rif region, which is the same area of the country where she served as a Peace Corps volunteer before she was evacuated in 2020 due to the pandemic.

Roger Onofre plans to enroll at the University of Jordan in Amman for his year as a fellow, which begins January 2022. “The Boren Fellowship will allow me to become a strong Arabic speaker,” says Onofre, who is pursuing a master’s degree in international relations. “I will combine my Gilman, Fulbright and Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) experiences to thrive as a Boren Fellow.”

Ivy Raines, a Ph.D. student in political science, will study Persian and the local Tajik dialect to assist with her research in Tajikistan. “The Boren fellowship serves as a part of my doctoral research that centers on the intersection between modernization, gender and religious fundamentalism,” she says. After earning a Ph.D., Raines plans to join the U.S. Foreign Service.

Kelli Sunabe, a graduate student pursuing master’s degrees in public administration and international relations, is studying in Taipei during the 2021-22 academic year.

“During my 18 months of Peace Corps service, I primarily focused on learning Darija—the Moroccan dialect of Arabic—and while I hope to continue expanding my proficiency in Darija throughout the Boren Fellowship, I am very excited to focus on Tarifit this time around so that I may further engage with people in the region,” says Blankenship, who is also pursuing certificates of advanced study in security studies and Middle Eastern affairs.

“My Boren experience will be dedicated to language learning to improve my Mandarin proficiency and to learn about Taiwanese culture,” says Sunabe, who is a Robertson Foundation for Government Fellow at Maxwell. “I am enthused and grateful to have been selected as a Boren Fellow and look forward to growing my Mandarin language abilities to foster positive cross-cultural relations between the U.S. and China through a career with the U.S. Department of State.”

— Kelly Homan Rodoski