Two Honors College students nominated for national fellowships

Michigan State University has nominated two Honors College seniors for the nationally competitive James C. Gaither Junior Fellows Program.

Each year, the James C. Gaither Junior Fellows Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace holds a rigorous national competition to select approximately 12-14 graduating seniors to serve as research assistants. They are matched with senior fellows – academics, former government officials, lawyers and journalists from around the world – to work on a variety of international affairs issues.

MSU’s nominees are:

• Sumaya Malas, an Honors College senior majoring in comparative cultures and politics and international relations in James Madison College along with Arabic in the College of Arts and Letters.
• Edvard (Ellie) Tingstad, an Honors College senior majoring in economics in the College of Social Science, as well as Chinese and German in the College of Arts & Letters.

Malas has conducted research in Jordan about Syrian refugees and the healthcare system as part of a research assistantship with James Madison College. She is currently working on research with James Madison College professor Martha Olcott about the power of consolidation strategies in modern Middle Eastern regimes for her senior Honors thesis.

Tingstad has conducted independent research on the impacts of World Trade Organization membership on the Chinese automobile industry; contradictions between China’s economic liberalization and increasing societal restraints based on class and gender; in addition to analyzing World Bank data to study the relationship between Ukrainian economic growth, the Solow-Swam model of growth factors and the gross domestic product deflator. Tingstad also has worked as a research assistant for professor Carl Davidson in the Department of Economics.

“The James C. Gaither Junior Fellows Program is an excellent opportunity for these students to match their research pursuits with real-world application,” said Cynthia Jackson-Elmoore, dean of the Honors College.