Rising senior earns Gilman Scholarship to study abroad

Rising senior Hira Khan has been awarded a Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship.

A Biology major with minors in Chemistry and Arabic at McDaniel College, Khan of Littlestown, Pennsylvania, will study in Hong Kong during the fall 2025 semester.

She is among 3,500 undergraduate students selected from 17,000 applicants nationwide by the U.S. Department of State to represent the United States as a Gilman Scholar.

“I decided to study abroad because I want to further develop my intercultural competence and gain new experiences in a different part of the world,” said Khan. “In addition to taking science courses, I plan to study Mandarin Chinese while I’m there.” 

Khan is in the Honors Program at McDaniel and has been inducted into the college’s Alpha Lambda Delta (First Year Seminar), Beta Beta Beta (Biology), and Gamma Sigma Epsilon (Chemistry) national honor societies. She serves as vice president of the Muslim Student Association and is a member of McDaniel College’s Global Fellows program. 

Also, during her time at McDaniel, she has been involved with student-faculty research at the McDaniel Environmental Center and with Chemistry Professor Dana Ferraris, as well as served as a laboratory teaching assistant for General Chemistry. She is currently interning at The Wistar Institute, an independent nonprofit institution devoted exclusively to foundational biomedical research and training, through the National Science Foundation-funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program.

She said, “I strongly believe that a lot can be learned from navigating a new environment and culture on your own, and with my multinational background, I am aware of the importance of understanding different perspectives. I highly recommend studying abroad at least once during college.”

Khan is one of a total of 12 McDaniel students to have been awarded Gilman Scholarships. Previous recipients have studied in Jordan, Costa Rica, China, Hungary, France, and Mexico.

Established by the U.S. Congress, the Gilman Scholarship aims to make study abroad more accessible by supporting students with demonstrated financial need. It is an initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and has been administered by the Institute of International Education since the program’s inception in 2001. 

According to the Gilman Program, scholarship recipients for the fall are from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, with over 70% from rural areas and small towns and 55% identifying as first-generation college students.