Now, Terrafranca is out experiencing the world again, this time not in uniform.

Through his academic achievements at Fordham, he received a Boren Scholarship from the National Security Education Program to study Arabic and international policy in Jordan for 11 months.

Terrafranca began taking classes in international relations at the School of Professional and Continuing Studies in 2015. Through sharing ideas with his professors, he realized that there was a side to the Middle East he did not see during his deployment.

“While I was in the military, I couldn’t stop and reflect on anything I saw and did,” said Terrafranca. “Learning about the Middle East in the classroom spiked my interest even more, but I was learning at a distance. I wanted to learn things that couldn’t be taught in the classroom.”

The Boren Scholarship is an award that focuses on language comprehension and research studies in underrepresented countries. For Terrafranca, Jordan had a special pull.

“I think Jordan is one of the most interesting countries in the world,” he said. “It’s in the heart of the Middle East. It’s exciting for me, and there’s important work to do here.”

 Terrafranca said that seeing the provocative images in the media of the Syrian crisis, forced migration, and refugee problems over the past century greatly affected him. Currently, Jordan is the temporary home to over two million Palestinian and Syrian refugees.

“Now is the time to act,” he said, “so I need to be where the action is.”

As a Boren Fellow, Terrafranca is working with AMIDEAST, a nonprofit organization (NGO) trying to strengthen understanding and collaboration between North America and the Middle East and North Africa. He is taking classes in modern Arabic, Jordanian Arabic, political science, and gender studies while participating in service learning projects.

For his current project, he is stationed at EDAMA, an NGO that promotes sustainable development in the energy, water, and environment sectors of Jordan.

“Working at EDAMA gives me a chance to see an NGO that is committed to Jordan’s sustainable development,” said Terrafranca. “One aspect of their sustainable development plan that surprised me is their focus gender equality. I want to see whether these types of changes will build an environment that fosters democracy.”

In addition to his studies and his service learning, Terrafranca is also working on researching the effects of NGOs on developing countries. He hopes to measure NGOs’ influences, to determine whether the organizations change the culture of their host countries—he notes that NGOs have been viewed as “a form of imperialism” by some factions.

“That fascinates me,” he said. “I want to see how NGOs are changing the relationships between the people and the state—if they have any effect on the development of democracy in these countries.”

While serving  his Boren, Terrafranca hopes to also explore the poorest areas of the capital city, Amman, to “better understand what the people are up against.”

He admits, however, that his initial expectation of Jordan was wrong. The country is modernized and factions are working together for change—something he did not anticipate.

“It completely rose above my expectations,” he said. “This country has a fraction of the resources we have, but it uses them to a great extent.”

When he returns to Fordham in May 2017, Terrafranca plans to finish his degree and eventually enroll in graduate school. One requirement of the Boren Scholarship is that awardees must work for the federal government for at least one year; he said he’s looking forward to doing that public service.

“I want to take my skills and the lessons I learned at Fordham into the public sector and make certain America is a country that sticks to its values,” said Terrafranca. “I love America. I want it to be respectable in the eyes of the world.”

—Mary Awad

A recipient of a Boren scholarship, she’s living in Amman, Jordan—taking classes, absorbing the culture, and learning Arabic so that after graduation she can help seek solutions to water-related problems that are readily apparent in day-to-day life.

“Water conservation is second nature for everyone” in Jordan, Morton said, noting that most households get water delivered only once a week and have to make it last. “When the water runs out, the water runs out.”

The Boren Scholarship, part of the National Security Education Program, was founded to expand America’s expertise in the needs and perspectives of countries that are underrepresented in study abroad programs. It sends undergraduates to regions that are important for U.S. interests so they can learn the language; in return, the students spend at least a year working for the federal government in the national security arena after graduating.

Morton has set her sights on the State Department’s Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs. She hopes to help with policies that balance water security and environmental protection and that ease tensions between Middle East nations that have water-sharing agreements.

The scholarship has brought her a world away from where she was just two years ago, when, in the middle of her junior year, her growing qualms about her pre-med focus prompted her to make a change.

With “a lot” of support from Assistant Dean William Gould, she switched to international studies and started to actively seek learning opportunities in global affairs. A Fordham travel grant sent her to Scandinavia for a backpacking and leadership program that jumpstarted her interest in sustainability, an interest she developed in senior year as a youth representative in the United Nations public information department.

Morton needed a fifth undergraduate year to complete her major, and chose Jordan because it’s the best place to learn Arabic—“a beautiful language,” she said. She takes classes offered by the Council on International Educational Exchange at the Princess Sumaya Institute for Technology in Amman.

In addition to her classes in Arabic, area studies, and other topics, she’s been finishing up a senior thesis focused on the links between water problems and social unrest, with a focus on Syria. In her Boren application she noted the importance of helping Jordan—a key U.S. ally—address its own water issues as a way of avoiding political instability.

Doing something about water problems could promote peace in the region, she said, giving the example of a proposed Red Sea-Dead Sea pipeline project that would require talks between Palestine, Israel, and Jordan.

“I think that’s an important step,” she said. “If you sit down and try to have a political discussion among these three parties, I don’t know how much success you’re going to have. But when you are talking about a specific issue, such as water, I think it is easier to make an agreement. Because everyone needs water.”

Jordanians have been outspokenly curious about why she’s there—“always wanting to know why I study Arabic,” she said. And their hospitality seems to be showing in the actions of their government, which has been “truly incredible” in welcoming Syrian refugees despite Jordan’s water woes and tight resources, she said.

“Jordan doesn’t have oil, Jordan doesn’t have a huge economy, Jordan certainly relies on a lot of foreign aid, and so to put those resources to work for the refugees that are coming from Syria, I think that’s very impressive,” she said.

She and a few friends recently visited some of those refugees outside the Za’atari refugee camp, playing with a group of Syrian girls to help keep their spirits up. Rather than being a service activity, she said, the trip was about “just being there and being physically present and understanding more and seeing it myself.”

The experience reminded her of her Global Outreach projects at Fordham, she said. “The emphasis was always on walking in solidarity with others and in finding common ground.”