Michael Cort earns Boren grant to study in Middle East for a year

2014 May 1

Michael Cort, of Peachtree City, GA, is one of two cadets at the University of North Georgia to be selected as a 2014 recipient of the David L. Boren Scholarship to study abroad during the 2014-15 academic year.

Only 165 scholarships were awarded nationally this year out of 868 applications. In exchange for funding, recipients commit to working in the federal government for a minimum of one year.

Dr. Victoria Hightower, assistant professor of Middle East history at UNG, said earning two Boren Awards is a reflection of the success of the university's Arabic division and the support of the College of Arts & Letters.

"These types of awards are evidence of the strong Arabic program that we are building here. The Boren Award is highly competitive and for UNG's Arabic department to have received two awards plus an alternate is phenomenal," Hightower said.

Cort, who is studying in Oman during spring semester, will attend the American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. He spent the summer of 2013 studying in Morocco and attended UNG's Summer Language Institute in 2012 through a Project Global Officer (GO) scholarship, a federal program that funds instruction in strategic languages for ROTC students. An interest in public service brought Cort to UNG and the Corps of Cadets.

"Dr. Victoria Hightower played a big role in me obtaining the Boren. Her class 'World History in Arabic' challenged me to pursue opportunities within the field. The opportunities that I have received through Project GO, and now the Boren Award, have led me to places I never expected I would visit such as Morocco, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates," Cort said. "I believe obtaining international experience is becoming more and more vital for any aspiring leader."

Cort is majoring in Arabic and pursuing a minor in leadership.

NSEP is a major federal initiative through the U.S. Department of Defense designed to build a broader and more qualified pool of U.S. citizens with foreign language and international skills.