Congratulations Kara Coughlin- Rumsfeld Foundation Fellowship Recipient for 2015-16

The Rumsfeld Foundation funds first student at SU’s Maxwell School

The Department of Public Administration and International Affairs is pleased to announce that Kara Coughlin is the first ever Syracuse University recipient of a Rumsfeld Foundation Fellowship to support her studies in the MPA/MA IR dual degree program.  The foundation has provided fellowship support to promising students with an interest in serving the nation through policy-relevant fields or by pursuing a career in public service.  Fellowships are awarded on the basis of nominations from twenty-one confidential advisors in universities across the country. Given our strong public service ethos, we are pleased to be included as a new partner in the foundations efforts.

Kara will be a second year student in the MPA/MA IR program in 2015-16. She is focusing her studies in the areas of international development and security studies policy.  She served as a Graduate Assistant within the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism (INSCT) this past year.  As a Rumsfeld Foundation Fellowship recipient, Kara will receive a grant of $15,000 in stipend and $10,000 toward tuition over the fall and spring terms of this coming academic year.

Kara has completed courses in US Defense Strategy, Culture and World Affairs, Humanitarian Action, US Intelligence Community, Challenges in International Management and Leadership, and Public Administration and Democracy.  She is taking a graduate level course early this summer through a new University program, SU’s Crisis and Disaster Management Research and Training Initiative (CDM).   The course (taught by Professor Peg Hermann) will meet for one week in Syracuse followed by a second week in Iceland, where students can meet with those on the front lines in the organizations dealing with many of the crisis challenges the course covers.  The CDM is a cross-campus, interdisciplinary initiative tasked with understanding the dynamics and processes that occur as policy-makers, scientists, engineers, and citizens struggle to cope with crisis and disaster situations.

After that course, Kara will travel to Switzerland to participate in our Geneva Summer Practicum, while completing an internship at the International Organization for Migration within the Migration Management Unit on the Global Capacity-Building Fund.  Kara plans to spend her fall semester in the Maxwell-in-Washington (DC) program – collocated within the Center for Strategic and International Studies, before returning to campus in the spring.