Kayla Latricia Woodard and Riley Parks, two undergraduate English majors, have been awarded Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships from the U.S. Department of State. The award will help fund study abroad programs for the two students.
Woodard, from Chicago, will visit the Czech Republic. Parks, from Fisher, Ill., will travel to Thailand.
The Gilman Program is a competitive, merit-based scholarship aimed at supporting American students to gain proficiency in a variety of languages and cultures, skills that are critically important to their academic and career development.
The two English students were among 42 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign undergraduate students to earn Gilman Scholarships this spring.
“With 42 recipients, the U. of I. ranks among the top ten producers of Gilman Scholars across the country this term, supporting students from eight different U. of I. colleges cumulatively with $115,000 toward their studies abroad,” said David Schug, the director of the National and International Scholarships Program at Illinois. “An impressive 40% of our applicants received an award, twice the national average. The award gives these students not only a chance to study abroad but also represents the university across four different continents in the coming year.”
The U.S. State Department has awarded the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship to 3,500 American undergraduate students from all 50 states and the District of Columbia in spring 2025 to study abroad in over 170 countries.
Over 70% of selected Gilman Scholars are from rural areas and small towns across the United States, and 55% are first-generation college students. Gilman Scholars are U.S. undergraduate students with high financial need as federal Pell Grant recipients. The Gilman Program received a record-high of 17,000 applications across the 2024-25 academic year.
Editor's note: A version of this story was originally published by the Illinois News Bureau. Visit the original story to see the full list of winners at the University of Illinois.