The North Ful­ton Branch of the Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of Uni­ver­sity Women (AAUW) has just awarded $2,500 schol­ar­ships to two local women pur­su­ing their advanced degrees at area colleges.

• Aprana Ral­la­bandi is pur­su­ing her MBA at Rein­hardt College’s McCamish School of Busi­ness, Alpharetta cam­pus. She received her Mas­ter of Sci­ences in Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions from the Illi­nois Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy. A part time stu­dent with a full time job and fam­ily, she plans to use the AAUW funds to help pay for tuition and books. Ms. Ral­la­bandi said, “I know and will always remem­ber that when I needed some finan­cial assis­tance and asked for it, I was heard and helped and when­ever and how­ever I can, I need to give back so that this cycle goes on and the world is seen as a bet­ter place to live by more and more peo­ple. I see MBA edu­ca­tion as another step in my pur­suit for knowl­edge and con­tin­u­ous learning.”
• Olga Pet­rice­vic is a Ph.D. can­di­date in Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion at Geor­gia State University’s J. Mack Robin­son Col­lege of Busi­ness. In a Joint Degree Pro­gram, she received both her Mas­ters of Inter­na­tional Busi­ness from Robin­son Col­lege and her Bach­e­lor of Arts in Ger­man (Summa Cum Laude) from GSU’s Col­lege of Arts and Sci­ences. She has now entered into the final dis­ser­ta­tion stage of her Doc­tor­ate pro­gram and is work­ing on build­ing a com­pre­hen­sive data set to test hypothe­ses devel­oped in her dis­ser­ta­tion. Ms. Pet­rice­vic said, “The AAUW schol­ar­ship will enable me to advance much faster in my research by pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary fund­ing for col­lect­ing and build­ing a unique data set. I am so grate­ful and so hon­ored to be part of the AAUW com­mu­nity and I am com­mit­ted to actively con­tinue AAUW’s mis­sion of break­ing bar­ri­ers for women and girls, espe­cially in higher education.”