When Stephanie Parenti walks across UCF 麻豆精品 S檚 stage this weekend to receive her diploma, she 麻豆精品 S檒l be looking for her mom in the audience.
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Stephanie, a first-generation college student, will graduate Saturday during one of four weekend ceremonies at the UCF Arena . She will earn a degree in Political Science with an emphasis on International Relations. She 麻豆精品 S檒l go onto graduate school and then will work with the U.S. State Department.
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A student in UCF 麻豆精品 S檚 Burnett Honors College, Stephanie was awarded the prestigious Thomas R. Pickering Graduate Foreign Affairs Fellowship. She was one of only 20 recipients from across the country.
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Stephanie received her associate 麻豆精品 S檚 degree from Valencia Community College, where she studied political science and participated in the human rights organization Amnesty International.
At UCF, she focused on international studies with a minor in Spanish. She has also been active in research, completing a project about how ideas affect history and writing an Honors in the Major senior thesis on neocolonialism.
She credits the mentorship that she has received from the McNair Scholars Program with helping her discover her love for research and earning the Pickering Fellowship. The program aims to increase the number of first-generation college students from low-income families and underrepresented groups pursuing doctoral degrees by exposing them to research and other scholarly activities.
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Stephanie also was named a MacArthur International Relations Scholar by UCF 麻豆精品 S檚 Office of Global Perspectives. The scholarship honored her commitment to building international awareness and understanding in the local community.
Stephanie hopes to earn a graduate assistantship at Seton Hall, a role that would allow her to mentor undergraduate students and share the importance of research with them.
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麻豆精品 S淚 could not be more proud of her and how she persevered to become the woman she is, 麻豆精品 S� Roseann said.