USD Graduate School awards Muskie Fellowships to two students
Andrey Khomutovskiy of Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan and Nadezhda Tsoy of Almaty, Kazakhstan have been awarded the prestigious fellowship through USD. This program brings emerging leaders in key professional fields from Eurasia to the United States for one to two years of graduate study at institutions in the United States. Khomutovskiy, who received his bachelor’s degree in education at North Kazakhstan State, will be in the Master of Arts in Educational Administration program at USD while Tsoy, who graduated with her Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Accounting from the Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics and Strategic Research, will be in the Master of Business Administration program.
USD has partnered with the International Research & Exchanges Board to give Muskie fellows access to enriching graduate classrooms with new international perspectives and valuable professional experience on the ground. Eligible fields of study for fellows in the program include business administration, economics, education, environmental management, international affairs, journalism and mass communication, law, library and information science, public administration, public health, and public policy. The Muskie Graduate Fellowship program was established by Congress in 1992 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union to allow emerging leaders from the region to gain skills and knowledge in fields they often cannot study in their home countries, including public health, environmental policies and human rights law – allowing them to make valuable contributions in key professional sectors after returning home.
This is the first time the USD Graduate School has hosted Muskie Fellows. According to Dr. Laurie Becvar, Graduate Dean, Muskie Fellows assist the University in incorporating diversity into the intellectual and social lives of graduate students.
“Their participation will foster global awareness and enrich the graduate experience at the University of South Dakota,” added Becvar. “We welcome them with open arms and we are proud to be associated with the prestigious Muskie program.”
For more about the Fellowship, please visit www.irex.org/project/edmund-s-muskie-graduate-fellowship-program. Additional information about USD Graduate School is available at www.usd.edu/grad.