Abstract:
Although there are varied sources of information on international students studying in the U.S., there has arguably been little or no coverage of Georgian students in America. One example of U.S. foreign aid to Georgia is the Edmund S. Muskie Fellowship Program for exceptional scholars from the former Soviet republics. The U.S. State Department has sponsored this program for more than ten years. Since its inception, approximately 3,000 Eur-Asian citizens have graduated from this prestigious program, including the president of Georgia, Michael Saakashvili.In 2005, almost 500 Georgians applied for this scholarship, but only seventeen were selected. Two of these exceptional students are Tamara Janashia and Mary Davlasheridze, who are enrolled in two American graduate schools.The researcher will use immersion reporting and other narrative nonfiction techniques to write an in-depth profile of these two Georgian Muskie fellows and their experiences in the United States.