Staff from Iraqi scholarship program visit Elon campus

Two representatives from Iraq visited campus July 10 as part of a larger visit to the United States to research potential partners for a scholarship program that sends young Iraqis overseas for a college education.

Maha K. Kareem and. Ihsan Alwan Muhsin Al-Sweidi work with the Iraq Scholarship Initiative under the auspices of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. This new scholarship will by Fall 2010 send 10,000 Iraqi undergraduate and graduate students outside Iraq to continue their higher education.

The program’s goal is to rebuild Iraq’s own higher education system by developing a new base of faculty. Woody Pelton of the International Centre met Maha Kareem on his visit to Iraq in January 2009 as part of a delegation of university officials invited for the inauguration of this scholarship program.