Miriam (Ife) Okpali, '16, receives scholarship to The Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University

Miriam (Ife) Okpali, '16, was an English-Writing & Philosophy major, and while at Loyola worked in the Writing Center. She received a scholarship to the The Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University where she will pursue a concentration in global energy & environment policy.

Ife is specifically interested in the "Global Energy & Environmental Policy" concentration. As an undergrad, she didn't always know that she wanted to go into International Affairs. In fact, she was set on Law School. However, as she took language courses in French and Arabic she started to shift her focus. An English course titled "Postcolonial Literature: Homelands" heightened her interest in diverse narratives, courses in Writing (Travel Writing, Writing Fiction, Writing Poetry) alerted her to the fact that she most enjoys writing about subjects involving cross cultural experiences. She took a number of political philosophy courses (Justice in Global Perspective, Critique of Political Economy, Contemporary Political Philosophy) that sparked and fostered her interest in international issues.

Ife writes, " I am really thankful that I was able to receive a liberal arts education that insisted upon a required core. The core allowed me to recognize and develop interests I didn't know I had."