Three Colin Powell School students — Zuha Khan, Rachel Olatunji, and Heaven Castillo Tejada — were among the six CCNY undergraduates selected for the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship. Twenty-nine students across CUNY were selected overall. The scholarship is administered by the U.S. Department of State and provides support for overseas travel and research.
Following are CCNY’s Gilman Scholars, their destinations, and research topics:
Zuha Khan: From CCNY’s Macaulay Honors College, Khan, a senior, received her Gilman to study Arabic at the Sijal Institute for Arabic Language and Culture in Amman, Jordan. An international studies major in the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership, she will return to the United States this May.
![Gilman Scholars Mariela Roa, Heaven Tejeda, Susan Lin and [insert] Zuha Khan.](https://colinpowellschool.ccny.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Gilman-Scholars_2026.jpg)
Susan Lin: A junior in the Macaulay Honors College, Lin spent the winter session in Morocco completing a medical internship in the north African nation.
Rachel Olatunji: The Colin Powell School senior is using her Gilman Scholarship to fund her spring semester at Sciences Po in Reims, France. Olatunji is a political science and sociology double major.
Mariela Roa: Majoring in Urban Studies and the Built Environment, Roa recently returned from Costa Rica where she studied in the Tropical Marine Biology Short-Term Field Program at Universidad Veritas in San José.
Heaven Castillo Tejeda: Over the course of two weeks, Tejeda traveled across Costa Rica collecting plankton samples, visiting national parks, and mangrove forests, as well as observing live research tests on different ray species. For the Colin Powell School senior pursuing an BA/MA in psychology, the program helped her to better understand Costa Rican culture and experience one of the most biodiverse regions of the world.
CCNY’s sixth Gilman Scholar, art major Damante Griffith, traveled to Japan.
About the Gilman Scholarship
The U.S. Department of State’s Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program (Gilman Program) provides up to $5,000 in merit-based scholarships to outstanding American undergraduate students with high financial need to pursue credit-bearing academic studies and career-oriented internships abroad. These opportunities equip Gilman Scholars with international experience, global networks, and foreign language skills essential to advancing U.S. economic competitiveness and national security.
Learn more about the scholarship here.
