UC Business Scholar Awarded Study-Abroad Opportunity in Brazil

Kyle Quinn, BBA ’13, received the 2012 Boren Scholar award for $20,000 to study abroad at Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) in São Paulo, Brazil for the 2012-13 school year.

“I’m on cloud nine,” Quinn says of the opportunity to further hone his accounting skills. “I cannot even believe it.”

Boren Scholarships

offer American undergraduate students study-abroad opportunities in underrepresented areas of the world that are critical to our nation’s future security. In return, students commit to work in the federal government.

“I intend to follow the track of becoming a U.S. Diplomat,” says Quinn, a Lindner Honors-PLUS business scholar.

Quinn, who has an interest in social sustainability projects, was selected because of his interest in studying less commonly taught languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Swahili. Quinn is currently learning Portuguese.

The scholarship, which is funded by the National Security Education Program (NSEP), also focuses on fields of study deemed critical to U.S. national security. As an applicant, Quinn had to write an essay on how the study-abroad program and future career goals, will contribute to national security.

Quinn wrote about the potential threat of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) to U.S. national financial security, he says.

“The U.S. will be moving from Generally Accepted Accounting Practices to IFRS in the coming years,” Quinn says. “This is a significant change.”