Bachelor of Arts [B.A] [International Studies - Africa and The Middle East] From West Virginia University

Students are encouraged to take advantage of opportunities for professional internships and study abroad, which may be undertaken for academic credit. Through internships, students gain firsthand knowledge of private and public organizations engaged in international social, economic and government affairs.

This area of emphasis offers courses focused on Sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, and the Middle East. Required courses offered at WVU are advanced French and German; other language courses taken abroad or elsewhere can count (e.g., Arabic, Swahili, or Turkish) towards this requirement. Students select four analytic courses in international/comparative economics, development issues, international politics, U.S. foreign policy, and/or up to six additional hours of advanced language.

International Studies majors have been remarkably successful lately in receiving prestigious national scholarships, WVU’s highest recognition at graduation, and admission to top graduate programs in the United States and abroad. Among our current and recent graduates, one has received a Truman Scholarship, two have been awarded Fulbright Scholarships, two have received Boren Scholarships, and at least three now have Critical Language Scholarships. At this year’s graduation, four seniors were designatedWVU Outstanding Seniors and two of them were among the eight University graduates inducted into the Order of Augusta—WVU’s highest academic recognition.

Beyond WVU, our graduates have been accepted to some of the most prominent graduate schools in the United States. These include the top international affairs programs at Turfs University (Fletcher School), Georgetown (Walsh School), George Washington (Elliot School with Law), Syracuse (Maxwell), American University (SPIA), Pittsburgh (GSPIA), Kentucky (Patterson School), Denver (Korbel School), and the University of Washington (Jackson School). Others have gone abroad for graduate studies and been accepted to such schools as the London School of Economics, the University of London, the University of Manchester, the Ocean University of China in Qingdao, and (via WVU’s Atlantis Program) Collegium Civitas in Poland and the University of Tartu in Estonia. Still other graduates with second majors in Agriculture and Biology have gone on to prestigious programs in international agriculture at Cornell University and international public health at the University of Pittsburgh.