AASU Establishes Steve Rhee Scholarship Fund in Political Science

Savannah, GA—Armstrong Atlantic State University has established the Steve Rhee Scholarship Fund for political science students thanks to a generous donation from professor Steve Y. Rhee and his family. Rhee made the donation on the occasion of his retirement from the university after twenty-nine years of teaching and professional service to the discipline. The endowed fund will be held in perpetuity.

The Rhee family made the donation as a token of their appreciation to the university for enabling them to achieve their professional goals. Dr. Rhee and his wife, Mrs. Sarah Y. Rhee, and their two children, Dr. Eugene Rhee and Dr. Sonia Rhee, contributed to the donation for the establishment of the scholarship.

"Each year a student will be selected who has demonstrated meritorious leadership in promoting the understanding of United States government operations and the broad based understanding of the international affairs of the U.S. in the twenty-first century," said Rhee.

The fund will provide an annual scholarship to a student who shows promise of serving as a leader after his or her graduation from the university. The student must be an undergraduate student majoring in political science who has completed at least seventy semester hours of undergraduate course work with an overall grade point average of 3.00. Applicants also must demonstrate completion of at least one year of foreign language course work with a grade of "B" or better.

"Dr. Rhee has been a great role model and mentor to his students and colleagues throughout his career at Armstrong Atlantic," said Dr. Daniel Skidmore-Hess, interim head of the Department of Criminal Justice, Social and Political Science. "His leadership helped build our international programs as well as Armstrong's ties to the community through his work on behalf of the Savannah Council on World Affairs and the academic world as one of the founding members and past president of the Association of Third World Studies." As of 2002, the association had a membership of approximately 435 with truly global perpectives in composition and orientations.

Skidmore-Hess described Rhee as a great exemplar of true scholarship and professionalism and said his legacy at Armstrong Atlantic now includes generosity and resources to help build careers for students in political science and international studies.

For more information on the new scholarship, contact AASU's Department of Criminal Justice, Social and Political Science at 912.927.5296.

May 1 , 2003