The goal of the Borderlands Humanitarian Impact Through IGG scholarship is to remove economic barriers to a quality IGG education with aims to expand the diversity of future IGG Practitioners. This scholarship, funded by a former student of the IGG center, will be provided annually to a student seeking IGG education through the Ramapo College IGG Certificate Program, and will cover the tuition costs for the 15 week IGG certificate program.

Background:

Since the year 2000, remains of more than 9000 people have been found in the desert borderlands spanning the international US-MX border(1). While staggering, this number likely significantly underestimates the lives lost as locating human remains in remote regions is uniquely challenging(2). When humans are recovered, the hostile conditions to which their remains are exposed make identification even more difficult, with even the most successful medio-legal authorities identifying only approximately 66% of people (3). IGG can help; partnering with agencies to resolve cases of long-term unidentified, restoring names, and providing answers to families living with ambiguous loss (4).

Qualifications:

Applicant must demonstrate how prior study, advocacy, and/or experience in humanitarian aspects of borderlands issues would inform their IGG practice. Applicant must also be a successful applicant for the Fall IGG Certificate Program.

Deadline:

Applications accepted on a rolling basis. One student accepted to the Fall IGG certificate program each year will be awarded the Borderlands Humanitarian Impact Through IGG Scholarship.

Prompt:

Explain how your lived experience encompassing borderlands, human migration, and/or refugee connections and/or advocacy will inform your future goals and objectives as an IGG Practitioner. (500 words)

1 Anderson, B., Reineke, R. (2023). Migration, Death, and Disappearance: Education and Engagement in Tucson, Arizona. In: Murray, B., Brill-Carlat, M., Höhn, M. (eds) Migration, Displacement, and Higher Education. Political Pedagogies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-12350- 4_7
2 Levi Stallings. The desert “erases people:” Volunteers try to count migrant deaths, but the true number is unknown. Salon. 18 February 2024. https://www.salon.com/2024/02/18/the-desert-erases-people- volunteers-try-to-count-migrant-deaths-but-the-true-number-is-unknown/
3 Caroline Tracey. How a medical examiner’s office transformed to address immigrant death. High Country News. 19 Sept 2022. https://www.hcn.org/issues/55-1/south-western-work-how-a-medical-examiners- office-transformed-to-address-migrant-death/
4 Boss, P. (2000). Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvjhzrh4