MILLEDGEVILLE, Ga. — A prestigious scholarship will send two Georgia College students to further their educations in Europe this summer.

At the end of August, friends and fellow GC students Audrey Waits and Kevin Morris will board planes to Finland and Macedonia, respectively, as part of the nationally recognized Fulbright U.S. Student Program, adding two Bobcats to the winners’ list of one of the nation’s most sought-after academic awards.

Waits, a biology grad student who will study the transmission of disease between reindeer and Finland’s indigenous Sami people, and Morris, a senior economics-history double major who will teach English and civic engagement in Macedonian schools, are two of roughly 1,900 finalists nationwide to be awarded the grant.

GC mathematics major Samantha Clapp was named an alternate.

The university has produced only one finalist in the program’s 70-year history.

“It’s awesome. How excellent is it that we have two students be finalists?” said GC Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Dr. Kelli Brown. “Being able to represent Georgia College throughout the world is … amazing.”

Becoming only the second and third Bobcats to be awarded the Fulbright, Waits and Morris needed strong cases to position themselves for the award, and the students’ accomplishments at GC have put them firmly in the discussion of the University’s finest students. In the summer 2015, Morris worked at the U.S. Embassy in Croatia as a commercial diplomacy intern, meeting and conducting market research for local business, nonprofit, and government leaders (and even meeting President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović). Last summer, he worked as a regional security intern at the U.S. Embassy in Macedonia, studying the finer points of protecting an international embassy and the people inside. In August, Morris will again journey to Macedonia to help spread American innovations.

“I’ll be doing a couple of different things,” said Morris of his nine-month trip. “I’ll be teaching university students English while I’m there, and as part of the [Fulbright’s] community impact projects, I’ll be implementing some cool American community theatre projects. We’ll hopefully be able to bring over the Times Talks model [a series of wide-ranging academic lectures created by the New York Times] that we have here at Georgia College, which is run by the American Democracy Project, and encourages facilitated community discussions.”

While Morris, an aspiring foreign service officer, has compiled an impressive resume in civic and international relations, his friend and former Bell Hall Community Advisor has conducted her studies on a much smaller scale. Earlier this year, Waits was one of three GC students to discover three viruses that had previously been unknown to science. This summer, Waits will begin a nine-month residency at the University of Oulu in Northern Finland with Dr. Arja Rautio, where she will assist the professor in studying the effects of climate change on pathogenic bacteria in fecal samples of reindeer.

“Let’s say we have a few samples that have tested positive for E. Coli,” said Waits. “We would ask ‘Are there any people getting sick from the reindeer?’ ‘Ok, well these are the symptoms that they have’. I won’t be able to actually test people because I have no medical training, but we would look at, based off symptoms, could we establish with a reasonable cause that maybe these two things are related? Specifically, we’re looking at whether these cases are changing as the weather gets warmer, because I’m looking at it more through the environmental health aspect.”

The university’s National Scholarship Office staff help the university’s brightest students in winning American and international scholarships, and was cited by Morris as one of his main reasons for being awarded the grant. Although it’s much easier to be excited for a successful student than it is to arrive in Finland for a nine-month stay just as the colder months begin, the Charlotte native isn’t letting the prospect of winter two hours from the Arctic Circle dampen her spirits.

 “I’ve never lived in another country, so that will definitely be an adjustment, but I’m very excited for the cold,” said Waits. “I’ve already started looking up all the different things I can do in the winter. I’ll be skiing all the time, and one of my bucket list items is to go ice skating on a lake that’s naturally frozen — I’ve never done that before.”