Eddie Ivie

While many universities in and beyond the State of Georgia supplement study abroad through scholarships based on a modest, campus-wide internationalize fee, Georgia Southern University does not. To assist with study in Ireland—the West’s “most globalized” economy—Georgia Southern’s Center for Irish Research and Teaching (CIRT) partnered with stakeholders in the city of Savannah to create and endow the Eddie Ivie Scholarship for Study in Ireland. Honoring the memory of a notable Savannah restaurateur whose principal passion was Ireland, the Eddie Ivie Scholarship makes either one or two $1,000 awards annually.

The winged horse Pegasus from Greek mythology is the symbol of the Eddie Ivie Scholarship for Study in Ireland. A lover of Irish poetry, Eddie Ivie identified particularly with the five-stanza lyric entitled “Pegasus” by the Ulster writer Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967). That poem opens with the assertion, “My soul was an old horse.” It ends, however, by rejoicing, “[H]e grew | Wings upon his back. Now I may ride him | Every land my imagination knew.”