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Three City College of New York undergraduates are headed to Asia and South America on . Seniors Deborah Cobourne and Marlyn Santos-De La Rosa, and sophomore Amber Raine McCandless are recipients of the competitive national scholarships that provide support for overseas travel and research.

Cobourne, who is a psychology major in the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership, will spend the 2024-2025 academic year in South Korea studying sociology.  

The Brooklyn resident’s other honors at CCNY include the Jeannette K. Watson Fellowship from the Watson Foundation, and a MARC/U-RISE Fellowship funded by the National Institutes of Health. She plans to pursue a nursing and research career.

Santos-De La Rosa, a theatre and speech major, will attend the Portuguese Language and Culture program in São Pedro da Aldeia, Brazil, January 2 – 23, 2025. There the East Harlem resident, whose minors are Portuguese Language & Lusophone Cultures and Black Studies, will study the arts, culture, history, and literature of São Pedro da Aldeia and the Lake Region of Brazil.

Last spring, Santos-De La Rosa was the recipient of the Downer Language Scholarship in Portuguese from the CCNY Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literature.  She’s scheduled to graduate in spring 2025.

“My goal is to become an advocate for cultural awareness and preservation, utilizing my background in theatre, speech, and language studies to promote understanding and appreciation of diverse cultures, particularly those within the Black diaspora,” she said. “I also aim to pursue cultural advocacy through my art.”

McCandless, CCNY’s third Gilman Scholar, is an international relations and history double major. She will spend the 2024-2025 academic year in Japan studying the language and politics there. Her Gilman is in the “Critical Needs Language Award” category. It adds to her other academic honors: a Certificate of Achievement from the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literature, and the Dean's List. 

Scheduled to graduate in spring 2026, McCandless sees diplomacy in her future. “I want to become a diplomat specializing in the international relations of East Asia,” said the Harlem resident.