Avondale School District graduate awarded highly competitive fellowship

Avondale High School graduate and Michigan State University student, Varsha Koduvayur, has been awarded a nationally competitive research assistant fellowship through the Carnegie Junior Fellows Program within the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C.

Koduvayur is an Honors College senior majoring in international relations and comparative cultures and politics in James Madison College and Arabic in the College of Arts and Letters. Excited to be working at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) as a junior fellow for the Middle East program, she knows that this experience will provide a strong foundation for her future career in international relations which she hopes to enter upon graduation. “The depth of knowledge and policy analysis skills that CEIP will equip me with will be invaluable,” she said.

After graduating from Avondale School District in the top ten of her class in 2010, Koduvayur, who is the daughter of Sundar and Kanthi, entered Michigan State University where she was accepted into Honors College. Cynthia Jackson-Elmoore, dean of the Honors College nominated Koduvayur along with another senior for the fellowship. Both students, she said, “pursued rigorous programs of study with an eye toward engaging in our global community and becoming game changers.”

A prestigious award and recognition, the CEIP fellowships are only presented to ten to twelve nominees from a pool of about 400 each year. “MSU has facilitated Varsha using her scholarly pursuits to better the world and this prestigious scholarship is another important step in her journey to doing that,” said Jackson-Elmoore.

In addition to receiving the fellowship, Koduvayur also recently received the Cole International Study Award for her time in Morocco as part of MSU’s Arabic Flagship Program. She has also interned for The Prajnya Trust in India and the Center for Gender in Global Context at MSU; worked as a paralegal for the McGinty Law Firm in East Lansing; and participated in the G20 Youth Summit in Germany.

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