{"id":4038,"date":"2021-11-08T14:22:47","date_gmt":"2021-11-08T19:22:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/?p=4038"},"modified":"2025-01-28T09:18:21","modified_gmt":"2025-01-28T14:18:21","slug":"following-in-her-sisters-footsteps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/2021\/11\/following-in-her-sisters-footsteps\/","title":{"rendered":"Following in Her Sister’s Footsteps"},"content":{"rendered":"
Diplomacy student Kelly Tobin earned the prestigious Boren Award just a few years after her sister Emma \u201919.<\/em><\/div><\/div>\n

By Jen A. Miller<\/p>\n

Kelly Tobin \u201923 didn\u2019t want to go to Seton Hall for a very important reason: Her sister Emma Tobin \u201919 was already a student there.<\/p>\n

In typical little sister fashion \u2014 and being not just the younger sister but the youngest of four siblings \u2014 she wanted to do something different, but agreed to spend a day on campus. She went to an honors class and a diplomacy class with her sister and spoke to the dean.<\/p>\n

\u201cI fell in love with it. I fell in love with the class size and with the professors who already cared about me even though they didn\u2019t know who I was,\u201d she said. She also realized that her sister was right \u2014 the school had an excellent diplomacy program and an ideal location between New York City and Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know it sounds silly, but it was a perfect match, even though it wasn\u2019t what I originally expected.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tobin was born in California and spent time growing up in the Netherlands and Switzerland due to her father\u2019s job in biotechnology, which required frequent moving. She\u2019s majoring in diplomacy and international relations and may add a modern languages major.<\/p>\n

One condition of the Boren Award is that recipients work in the federal government for at least one year after graduation, which for Tobin isn\u2019t a problem. A government job, possibly in intelligence, had already been her post-graduation goal. \u201cI\u2019m not quite sure at what level yet, but the Boren has given me a boost,\u201d she said.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In 2021, she was also selected for a David L. Boren Scholarship, which is supported by the National Security Education Program and funds undergraduate overseas study of less commonly taught languages critical to U.S. interests, including Arabic, Chinese and Russian.<\/p>\n

Tobin initially planned to apply for the scholarship to study Russian in Kazakhstan, but instead opted to apply to go to Azerbaijan and study Turkish for two reasons.<\/p>\n

First, she wants to work in Eastern Europe relations in whatever government role she eventually takes after graduation and knew that speaking Turkish will help her there. Second, she has experience with the culture. In middle school, she spent 10 days in Turkey with a host family and, when she took a gap year between high school and college, she spent time living in the Kreuzberg section of Berlin, Germany, which has a large Turkish population. The father of the family who hosted her spoke Turkish, too. \u201cAll these things lead up to me asking \u2018why haven\u2019t I learned Turkish sooner,\u2019\u201d said Tobin, who also speaks German and, of course, Russian. She figured she\u2019d try for the scholarship to study Turkish, and if she didn\u2019t get it, she\u2019d apply for Russian the following year. As part of the Boren program, Tobin participated in the Turkish Flagship Language Initiative virtual summer program in 2021. She was supposed to be studying in Azerbaijan this fall, but the program was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She expects to be able to go next fall. For the time being, she\u2019s returned to her role as a resident assistant at Seton Hall for the fall semester, continuing membership in the school\u2019s Slavic Club, and is helping organize the University\u2019s first mock trial tournament.<\/p>\n

One condition of the Boren Award is that recipients work in the federal government for at least one year after graduation, which for Tobin isn\u2019t a problem. A government job, possibly in intelligence, had already been her post-graduation goal. \u201cI\u2019m not quite sure at what level yet, but the Boren has given me a boost,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Tobin learned about the Boren from her sister, who also won the award and is working toward a master\u2019s degree in International Development at the University of Oxford. Tobin also had support in applying for the scholarship \u2014 even as a sophomore, when she might have thought she was too young \u2014 from associate professor Matthew Escobar, the director of prestigious fellowships at Seton Hall.<\/p>\n

Escobar isn\u2019t surprised Tobin has flourished at Seton Hall, or that she won the Boren. She \u201cimmediately struck me as a serious young scholar with a wealth of international experience,\u201d he said. \u201cI fully expect Kelly to take her place among the nation\u2019s best informed, most committed public officials.”<\/p>\n

Jen A. Miller is the author of Running: A Love Story.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Diplomacy student Kelly Tobin earned the prestigious Boren Award just a few years after her sister Emma \u201919.<\/p>\n

Continue ReadingFollowing in Her Sister’s Footsteps<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":5160,"featured_media":4040,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[259,17,6],"tags":[239,163,125,173],"class_list":["post-4038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles-2020-2024","category-scholarship","category-students","tag-diplomacy-and-international-relations","tag-scholarship","tag-servant-leadership","tag-students","entry"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4038"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4155,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4038\/revisions\/4155"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}