Prestigious scholarship provides once in a lifetime opportunity for US student

Despite growing up in a small American rural town that was a nine-hour drive from the coastline, United States student Keira Smith always had a desire to learn about the ocean and discover everything she could about the organisms that inhabit the sea.

The 19-year-old has now been able to chase her dream to further her studies in marine biology across the other side of the world after securing a Gilman Scholarship to spend a semester at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University.

“Living so far away from the beach created a hunger to work by the ocean and learn all I could about marine biology. Massey is such an amazing place and, completely unlike my hometown high school and university, it is actually next to the ocean. It's very hard to study marine biology when you're a long way away from the coast!”

The Gilman Scholarship programme is funded by the United States Department of State and run in conjunction with Education New Zealand. It aims to support American undergraduate students from diverse backgrounds to study abroad where they would otherwise not be able to afford to. When Keira found out she had been successful in her application, she says she told just about anyone who would listen.

“I was ecstatic, beyond happy. Being awarded this scholarship took away a huge sum of my financial burden and was a once in a lifetime kind of opportunity I couldn't let pass. I knew the animal biology in New Zealand would be like nothing in America and I would never again get the chance to see it if I didn't take my study abroad there.”

Keira has taken a break from her classes at the Berea College in Kentucky to study marine biology and creative writing at Massey until the end of the year. She is enjoying the different teaching methods from America and discovering the rich biodiversity that cannot be found anywhere else in the world. 

“I am so excited to apply what I have learned at Massey about their unique animal biology in my papers back home, where practically every biological creature is different from those here.”

Keira will be in Aotearoa New Zealand for six months and plans to travel around the country visiting as many of its beautiful long beaches as she can.