Eric Alper, a graduate student in the department’s Master of Public Administration Program (MPA), was recently awarded a Boren Fellowship. The Boren Fellowship Awards are an initiative of the Department of Defense National Security Education Program. This program provides fully funded (up to $30,000), long-term overseas study of lesser taught languages in regions of the world that are critical to U.S. interests as well as national security. The majority of fellows are individuals who plan to pursue careers in the federal government.
Eric applied to study Hindi through Boren’s South Asian Flagship Languages Initiative (SAFLI) during the 2022-2023 academic year. He is the first graduate student in the MPA program – and the fifth graduate at Texas State – to receive this prestigious and highly competitive award. Eric is hopeful that studying Hindi in India and strengthening his knowledge of environmental policy will aid in fulfilling his professional goals and serving the US government.
Dr. Nandhini Rangarajan, an Associate Professor and Director at Texas State, commented on this achievement by saying, “As the director of the Master of Public Administration program, I am very proud of the fact that an MPA student is the first recipient of this prestigious fellowship at Texas State University. As a South Asian from India, I was particularly happy that Eric chose to learn Hindi and spend time in Jaipur, a historically, culturally and architecturally rich city in Northwestern India. I hope many more MPA students get the opportunity to follow in Eric’s footsteps to other parts of the world as Boren Fellows”
