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Georgia Southern University honors student Rose Marie Sheahan has been awarded the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship. Sheahan, an international studies major and University Honors Program student, will use the award for study at Nagoya University of Foreign Studies in Japan.

The Gilman award is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the Institute of International Education. Sheahan is the fifth Georgia Southern University student recipient of a U.S. Department of State award in the past two years.

Growing up in rural Springfield, Sheahan had dreamed of traveling to Japan.

“I have always been fascinated with Japan’s culture and language and wanted to learn more about this vastly different society,” said Sheahan.
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High Point University students are taking full advantage of overseas learning opportunities. During the spring 2009 semester, the Study Abroad program at HPU will send overseas the largest number of participants it has had in several years. Nine students will be studying abroad during the semester - plans include Gold Coast, Australia; Suva, Fiji; London, England; Florence, Italy; and Swansea, Wales.

Dr. Kelly Norton, director of experiential learning at HPU, says the Study Abroad program has increased in popularity - not only is it a great opportunity, but it gives students a more global perspective on everything they do.

“Our students are coming in more internationally minded,” Norton says. “We have more students than ever before who are interested in studying abroad in the next year. … This opportunity provides students with a challenge to adapt to unfamiliar surroundings and gives them a vision of what’s outside of the United States.”
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Preparations are under way for the 45th Annual Junior Science, Engineering, and Humanities Symposium to be held Feb. 3-5 at the University of Florida.

More than 300 ninth- through 12th-grade students and science teachers from school districts throughout the state will attend. The event is sponsored by the university’s Center for Precollegiate Education and Training, the Academy of Applied Science, U.S. Army Research Office, the Office of Naval Research and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. More than 100 administrators, faculty and graduate students will participate in this important event.

Twenty 11th- and 12th-grade students will present their research in competition. First-, second- and third-place speaker winners will be awarded scholarship monies to the university of his or her choice. The first- and second-place winners will present their research at the National Junior Science and Humanities Symposium (NJSHS) in Orlando in May. All five speaker winners will be awarded trips to attend the NJSHS.
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In two years and with a little help from the state, Deborah Frank will have repaid her student loans from nursing school.

Frank, a licensed practical nurse at the Manteno Veterans Home for the last 12 years, is one of the first to participate in the state’s new loan repayment program aimed at recruiting and retaining more nurses to work at Illinois’ four veterans’ homes.

Under the Veterans Home Nurse Loan Repayment Program, the state has set aside $1.22 million so it can offer qualifying nurses grants up to $5,000 annually over four years to repay education loans.

The incentive should help the state better compete with private hospitals, nursing homes and other facilities that all are trying to find and keep qualified nurses in a shrinking pool of candidates, according to Jessica Woodward, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs.
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AP

Credit-market tremors _ like the ones linked to the housing crisis _ are beginning to show up in the $85 billion student-loan market.

While there’s no apparent shortgage of loans available to college-bound Americans, analysts say rising defaults, coupled with a new law that cuts federal subsidies to student lenders, are beginning to strain the industry.

The rising defaults have surfaced amid falling home prices and rising foreclosures, trends that last summer touched off a crisis in global credit markets as investors faced the prospect of not being repaid on mortgage-backed securities.

In some cases, families whose home loans are resetting at dramatically higher rates may have difficulty keeping current on payments on student loans or auto loans _ which recently have » Read more after the jump →

Yale University next month plans to announce a student aid plan that could rival Harvard’s initiative to ease costs for “middle-income'’ families.

The governing board for Yale, located in New Haven, Connecticut, met last week to discuss the enhanced program, university spokesman Tom Conroy said in a telephone interview yesterday. The change is occurring “irrespective of any other institution’s announcement,'’ he said. Conroy couldn’t supply details about the initiative, he said.

Harvard on Dec. 10 unveiled a plan that trims the annual cost of attending the Cambridge, Massachusetts, school by as much as half for families earning between $120,000 and $180,000. Other schools, responding to competition for the best students, will follow suit, said Terry Hartle, senior vice president at the Washington-based American Council on Education.

“Elite selective institutions are in fierce competition with each other for everything,'’ Hartle said in a telephone interview yesterday. “When one makes a bold step like Harvard, the others need to follow suit. I expect we will see similar action by a number of elite institutions within the year.'’

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena yesterday said it will replace loans with grants for students whose families earn less than $60,000 a year. Pomona College in Claremont, California, said it will make an announcement on financial aid today.

Princeton First

Affordability programs trace their beginnings to 1998, when Princeton, in New Jersey, dropped loans from aid packages for needy students, said Tony Pals, information director for the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Washington. Grant-only packages were expanded to all Princeton undergraduates in 2001.

“There was a lot of doubt that peer institutions and other schools would be able to follow through,'’ Pals said in a telephone interview yesterday. “Obviously, we’ve seen that they have been. Harvard’s move will further that trend.'’

Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, are among more than 30 institutions who have already instituted programs such as the elimination of loans for some lower-income students, according to the nonprofit Project on Student Debt.

“With Harvard, if it is a straight-up competition thing, we can’t compete on an endowment level,'’ John Burness, Duke University’s senior vice president for public affairs and government relations, said in a telephone interview. “But we look at it and wonder, `Should we be tweaking it?”’

2004 Decision

Harvard started to address its costs systematically in 2004, when then-President Lawrence Summers decided to make attendance free for students from households with incomes of less than $40,000. That figure was raised to $60,000 last year.

President Drew Faust is expanding the program so that students from families earning $120,000 to $180,000 will pay 10 percent of income for tuition and fees. Those earning less than $120,000 will pay on a declining scale, with households at $60,000 attending for free. The new program is designed to focus on a “middle-income group,'’ she said.

The typical family earning $120,000 will pay about $12,000, compared with $19,000 now, according to data supplied by Harvard. The total cost of attending Harvard without aid this year is $45,620, the school has said.

At Princeton, the family contribution from households earning from $120,000 to $180,000 ranges from 5 percent to 20 percent of income, said spokeswoman Cass Cliatt. The average is about 16 percent, with families typically contributing $23,545 and receiving grants of $21,150, Cliatt said.

Payment Varies

The payment varies because Princeton considers an individual family’s assets, such as stocks and land, as well as income, while Harvard assumes an average net worth for each level of income, Cliatt said. Princeton excludes home equity from its considerations in computing aid, a step Harvard said on Dec. 10 it will also take next year.

“We are delighted that many of our peers are now addressing the challenge of these families in the more middle-income levels,'’ Princeton’s Cliatt.

Public universities and liberal arts colleges, could make their prices clearer and help students become less reliant on loans, said Matt Reed, a policy analyst with the nonprofit Project on Student Debt.

“Not everyone can do what Harvard did,'’ Reed said. “What we really hope is that all schools, across the spectrum of schools, will move in that direction.'’

In 2006, the nation’s median household income was $48,200, according the U.S. Census Bureau. Families with incomes exceeding $174,000 were in the top 5 percent of earners. bloomberg