POLAND – George Ciccariello Maher, son of Will and Linda Maher of East Poland, has been awarded the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, the most prestigious award available for graduate students in the United States.

The fellowship supports students pursuing graduate programs leading to the doctorate in selected field in the arts, humanities and social sciences. This year, 44 fellowships were awarded out of more than a thousand applicants.

The program is administered by the U.S. Department of Education’s Division of Higher Education, and provides four years of full support. The award consists of a stipend of $21,500 a year for four years plus an $11,000 cost-of-education award to the graduate institution, and typically has a value of nearly $130,000.

Ciccariello Maher is a 1997 graduate of Hebron Academy and a 2001 graduate of St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., where he double majored in economics and government. Since graduation, he has been living in Britain with his wife, Abbey, and pursuing a master’s degree in social and political sciences at Cambridge University, through the Davies-Jackson Scholarship program, a two-year award similar to the Javits.

He will pursue a PhD in political science at the University of California, Berkeley, beginning this fall.