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Brian Rutenberg - Fulbright Student to Ireland, 1997

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The Literary Writer’s Guide to Getting a Fulbright Fellowship

In Guest Contributors by Guest Contributor July 23, 2012

By Anna Clark

Two myths about the U.S. Fulbright fellowship program that I want to get out of the way:

• Literary writers: you too can get a fellowship. I know the program is best known for work in fields like public health, anthropology, economics, and the hard sciences. But the scope of the Fulbright program is more expansive than you may think.
• No, it is not impossible to decipher the Fulbright program and application procedure. But I agree with you: the various online platforms for the program are utterly bewildering.

Consider this, then, the literary writer’s primer to the Fulbright.

The Big Picture

Fulbright is an international exchange program that has been sponsored by the U.S. State Department since 1946. The Institute for International Education administers it. Fulbright operates in about 155 countries, mostly sending people in the U.S. abroad, but also bringing people from other nations into the U.S. The program boasts that 43 of its alumni have won Nobel prizes and 81 have won Pulitzer Prizes. Another 28 are MacArthur Foundation fellows. The program was created by U.S. Senator William Fulbright (D-Arkansas) for the “promotion of international good will through the exchange of students in the fields of education, culture, and science.” There are at least eleven different kinds of Fulbright grants. The one I did — a Creative Writing project in Kenya – is through the “ U.S. Student Program .” This is misleadingly named: you don’t have to be a student to apply for this grant. I got my Master of Fine Arts in January 2007, but I didn’t apply for a “student” Fulbright until the fall of 2010. Offered as ten-month fellowships, Fulbrights through the student program are actually for “U.S. graduating college seniors, graduate students, young professionals and artists.” More details on the U.S. Student Program below. But first:

Fulbright and the Writer

The Fulbright program is quite clear about being primarily an inter-cultural program. They invest in the person, rather than the project. (Though obviously, the in-country folks in particular are looking for great projects that are relevant and interesting.) Creative Writing fellowships are rare: only fifteen people worldwide have creative writing Fulbrights in the current grant cycle, though they are scattered from India to South Africa to South Korea. But I suspect if word got out, and more great writers applied, this number would increase.

What does the writer do on her Fulbright? In my case, I wanted to divide my time between my own writing — short stories grounded in Nairobi — and facilitating creative writing workshops with young people across the city. I wanted to match my own writing with time in community, having a particular attentiveness to how a literary culture emerges. I wanted to understand how stories are told in a nation that is not yet fifty years old, even as I worked as a teller of my own stories.

Things didn’t go as planned. Thank goodness that the inter-cultural philosophy of the Fulbright leaves room for adaptation. When some of the workshops I wanted to do weren’t happening, I struggled with disappointment and feelings of inadequacy. But I had flexibility to find alternative opportunities to engage with literary communities in Kenya. I ended up doing workshops with iHub , with young children , and with teenage boys in Kawangware . I mentored individual writers in one-on-one meetings at Nairobi Java House. I co-directed an event series for Kenyan and foreign journalists to talk about the intersection of gender and media. I spent time listening in a Saturday morning downtown literary club. I spoke to university students, instead of doing workshops with them. I edited for Kwani , instead of doing workshops with them. (The workshop model, it seems, isn’t quite so ingrained in the practice of creative writing in East Africa as it is in the USA.) And again, instead of workshops, I did editing and proofreading for Kenya Imagine before I left for Nairobi, while I was there, and I will continue to do so whenever they ask. Just about all of this was un-planned — not part of my original project proposal, though in the spirit of it. And that doesn’t even get to the unexpected turns in my own writing: while I did write some short fiction, I also wrote a good deal of narrative nonfiction and poetry.

It was important for me to arrive in Nairobi with a plan, but it was also necessary to be agile. Personally and professionally, navigating the uncertain ground was powerful. And given the high stakes of being a foreigner in another culture — particularly as a white American writer approaching a culture that is too often exoticized — anything less than fluidity would have cut against the Fulbright’s core purpose. If I weren’t willing to change my own habits and expectations of writing in Kenya, I would have perpetuated a kind of cultural brutality. I also would have had fewer unexpected and heart-opening opportunities for joy.

But my experience is only one.

Dana Kroos, a novelist, is in Newfoundland, Canada on her Fulbright fellowship. Nicholas Gulig, a poet, went to Bangkok, Thailand. Both heard about the Fulbright opportunity through word-of-mouth. Gulig, as a University of Iowa MFA student, dated a woman who had done a creative writing fellowship in China. Kroos had seen email postings about it as an MFA student at New Mexico State University, but she “mostly dismissed these, thinking that the type of research supported by the Fulbright was more scientific and academic, rather than creative.” She assumed she’d need to apply for a travel grant for writers that was short-term and would hardly give her the chance to understand the place. Friends of friends eventually let her know otherwise.

Newfoundland was the ideal setting for Kroos’ novel because its culture has “evolved separate from Europe and North America, but tied to and threatened by both. This alienation has created a culture that values secrecy…that will reflect the interactions of my characters.” With a focus on a family that wrestles with different beliefs they draw from shared experiences, Kroos is interested in integrating Newfoundland’s regional folklore and legends. The sea-centered landscape and geographic isolation of Newfoundland is also a driving force. As in my case, Kroos found her plans shift once she got on the ground. She initially intended to live in St. Johns for one semester, and then move to a smaller town to research a specific setting for her novel. But, she notes:

“What I realized when arriving in Newfoundland, was that a three month semester was not enough time in a place to truly dig in and get to know the community and setting. I decided to stay in St. John’s for the entire year. While St. John’s is a sizeable city, it is surrounded by small villages less than a ten or twenty minute drive away. As I learned more about Newfoundland and my novel, I decided to set the story on the outskirts of St. John’s, in a created town that would be an amalgam of several of these villages.”

Gulig grew up in the Midwest as the son of a Thai woman who had moved to Wisconsin for art school, and then married his dad. Engaging more deeply with the Thai culture that had made him different than those he grew up with was part of his inspiration for pursuing his writing in Bangkok. Like me, Gulig was interested in literary culture outside of what he’d been immersed in most of his life: “I write among…writers who are similarly a product of the western canon, which limits us in a variety of ways, makes our thinking more insular than I would like it, pushes our art in the direction of certain inherited concerns.”

Gulig’s intention was to “to create a hybrid manuscript of poems, half here, half there, as a way of addressing formally and thematically” his experience as an artist that feels both connected and separated from Thailand. But he felt cautioned by the tricky legacy of Western writers going abroad to write. Says Gulig:

“There is a long (and oftentimes lazy) tradition in our culture of making myths of external actualities, romanticizing the idea of difference, exoticizing other people, places, idealizing them, often at their expense as well as ours, which is a kind of violence we are want to see instead as being “worldly” or whatever, “culturally diverse.”

“The problem, though, was that I wanted terribly to participate in the amalgamation of cultures without doing ‘violence,’ be the stranger in a strange land, and watch, through art, what happened to me as an individual and to my work, map the subtle transformations. But it wasn’t (and) isn’t easy.”

Gulig finally found that “the project [he] set out to do proved impossible to finish.”

“I realized pretty quick that dropping in out of nowhere into the middle of a place that does not belong to you, no matter who you are, no matter your relationship to that place, doesn’t translate into being able to speak of and for that place with any authenticity or accuracy,” he adds. “I could only be an outsider, looking in, which was (and) is problematic. Most of the books ‘about’ Thailand are written by people who aren’t Thai and they bear the burden of that perspective. A poet I met and worked with in Bangkok explained to me one night how sick she was of people arriving in her country, living there for a relatively short amount of time, and then defining the place and people in terms appropriate to the observer but not the people, not the place itself. After hearing that, I felt my project incredibly ill-conceived, ethically bankrupt, and aesthetically inept. I knew I needed to alter it in a fundamental way. And so I did.”

Gulig changed the focus of his manuscript “away from Thailand as an other I was trying to understand and (instead) document through art (my position in it)…Instead of attempting to do away with ‘middle-ness,’ I decided to embrace it as an actual place, neither here nor there, but still actually existing, actually real.” His manuscript shifted towards prose-poems — half one thing, half another, simultaneously both. He also found a collaborator. “I knew I needed the project to belong to someone other than myself, to a medium other than language,” Gulig said. “And so I found an artist, an illustrator in Bangkok named Kathy MacLeod who began providing illustrations to manuscript. In this way, the book is suspended between the two of us, and between our chosen mediums as well.”

About The U.S. Student Program

This Fulbright category includes the English-teaching assistantships and the travel-only grants designed to supplement another award or individual project; travel-only grants are available only for Italy, Germany, and Hungary. To apply for this grant in Creative Writing, you propose a project for where you want to go. Generally, a set number of grants total are available each year for a particular country. In my year, there were four U.S. Student Program grants available for Kenya. Depending on how politics are unfolding, Fulbright may suspend opportunities in certain countries. For example, you will not be surprised to learn that projects are not available in Syria right now. Some unique project categories are available only as a country-specific award, such as “Slow Foods” and “Deaf Studies” in Italy, or “Irish Language” in Ireland. There are other special programs available within the U.S. Student Program structure. There are special journalism project opportunities available in Germany , Taiwan , and the United Kingdom .

The bulk of the U.S. Student Program, though, is you proposing your individually-designed project through the general program. Whatever project category you apply in, you need to have an affiliation; that is, some local organization or school or library or fill in the blank that says they are willing to cooperate with you to help you do your work. They are not obliged to pay you anything or provide other material support. So, I proposed coming to Nairobi to work on my fiction and to facilitate writing workshops with young people through Kenyan literary organizations (Kwani Trust and the Imagine Company), and the University of Nairobi’s Department of Literature. It is unusual to have three affiliations; most people have one, though it does strengthen your application (and, hopefully, your project) if you have additional support.

In the case of Kroos, the Memorial University of Newfoundland Folklore and Language Archive is her affiliation, supporting her research into the folklore of the region. The archive grants her access to its resources and “the wealth of knowledgable faculty.” She also sits in on courses at Memorial University, learning from instructors and students alike. Kroos said, “the most potentially difficult factor is forming some kind of affiliation with a foreign institution where you most likely know no one and have no existing connections.” But, she added:

This is, however, how much research begins. The Folklore Department at Memorial University was immediately excited about my project and willing to become my host institution. Even so, it took awhile for them to formally approve the affiliation through the department and send the letter that I needed as proof for the Fulbright application.

Help is Available

While I haven’t been a student there since 2003, I filed my application through the University of Michigan’s International Institute . Most colleges have a similar institute that helps students and alums with their applications. This was great for me: I got feedback on my application that made it much better and I got help with organizing all the materials. I did have to go through an extra step — an in-person interview with two faculty members — and I did have to turn in my application earlier than the general Fulbright deadline. But it was absolutely worth it for the support I received in return. Kroos reports having a similar experience at New Mexico State University.

I should add that these international institutes often have Fulbright informational sessions starting about this time of year. Whether or not a college near you is your alma mater, you might think about attending the sessions it hosts. With the next round of Fulbright applications due in the early fall, plenty of these will be hosted over the next few months.

You don’t need to apply through a university though; you can also apply “at-large.” This is what Gulig did, with the editorial help of Jane, his girlfriend who had done a creative writing Fulbright in China. “I set aside about three months to work on the application, wrote endless drafts of essays, drafts of poems, all of which she read and edited and shed light on,” Gulig said.

Here’s What Applying Looks Like

For the application, which I filled out mostly online, I needed the following things: a letter from my affiliation (the folks I was doing writing workshops with), a creative sample (10 pages, in a requirement unique to the Creative Writing program), a personal statement, a project statement, and letters of recommendation. It’s not part of the official application, but because the professors that I interviewed with at the University of Michigan also filled out a one-page evaluation of me that was added to my application. I didn’t get to see this before it was submitted. If you are going to a country where you need to know a language that is not English, you will also need to have your language skills evaluated.

Here’s What Acceptance Looks Like

There are two stages to acceptance: one by a panel in the U.S. and one by a panel in the country you are going to. After turning in my application in September, I heard from the first round of cuts in February. I got the final answer in April.

You will have to attend an orientation. My region — Sub-Saharan Africa — had a pre-departure orientation, which meant we all gathered at a Marriott in Washington, D.C., for three days in late June. The people going to South and Central Asia had their orientation overlap with us, but in some regions, you have your orientation once you arrive in-country. A friend of mine who did a Fulbright in family law in New Zealand had an orientation there after she arrived in January.

Practicalities

• The Fulbright will pay for you to bring along your spouse and dependents. Availability of these funds varies from country to country.
• There is not a set Fulbright grant amount: it is calculated differently for different projects in different places, based on cost of living. You will receive it in installments, with most of the funds coming up front. The first installment cannot be deposited into your account earlier than about 4-6 weeks before you leave.
• The grant amount does not allot funds specifically for the costs of visas or vaccinations.
• The Fulbright funds are flexible. While they give you money based on certain categories (research, travel), they basically just deposit it in your account and you can spend it as it makes sense for you. You will, however, report your budget to the program in mid-year and end-of-year evaluations.
• The standard U.S. Student Fulbright grant is for 10 months, though there is room for negotiation. In some cases, you can go for a shorter length of time (I did) and in others you can apply for an extension once you are partway through your grant. I should note that as soon as I arrived in Kenya, I and the other Fulbrighters were told that grant extensions wouldn’t be available at all that year because of budget restrictions.
• The only concrete requirements after you receive the Fulbright and arrive in the foreign country are those two detailed program evaluations. You also will be obliged to stay in touch with the local U.S. embassy, including by attending a security briefing shortly after you arrive in-country.
• You can re-apply if you aren’t initially awarded a fellowship: Kroos was not accepted until the second time she submitted an application, after her novel was more deeply fleshed out.

The Final Word

From Kroos:

“I think that the great thing about the Fulbright program is that it’s flexible. It is, at its core, about understanding and forming relationships with other nations and cultures. We do this through writing in many ways. To be honest, there are few writing projects that share this common goal that would not be fitting to the Fulbright program. I could imagine not only works of fiction and poetry, but also children’s writing, travel writing, translation, adaptation, etc. etc. There seem to be endless possibilities for writers to explore their own styles and interests.”

“…it’s incredibly important to understand specifically how you work. If you need deadlines or affirmation or anything like that, the Fulbright probably is going to be a waste of your time. It’s easy, I think, to overly romanticize having all this freedom/time/security in which to work, but it’s also incredibly lonely, alienating work, which can make it difficult to actually do the work. There are going to be very few people who you can talk with about what you’re doing, which has the effect of creating certain doubts, certain strange anxieties in a lot of artists. This is something one should deal with and get over before arriving in the country. You don’t want to waste three months or more trying to figure these things out. The fellowship is simply too short.”

I will add that the Fulbright is most worthwhile for writers who are ready to unsteady themselves creatively, emotionally, and intellectually. That’s an easy sentiment to toss out there, but, I assure you, it is intense and difficult. It should be. When it’s time for you to risk it, in most cases, I believe, you know it.

This article is adapted, and expanded, from a post that originally appeared on Isak: http://www.isak.typepad.com .

DISCUSS: What Other Fellowship Programs Do You Recommend for Writers?

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The Prestigious Fulbright Award Is for Creative Writers, Too

Katherine arnoldi | january 2020.

Do you have a novel you want to write that takes place in Sicily? Madagascar? Belarus? Tahiti? If your character walks down the streets of San Cristobal, you have to walk those streets, right? If your character has an altercation with a shop owner in Perth, you have to describe the details, right? The specific gestures, the change in the voice, the thugs who enter from the back, the meat cleaver stuck in the rafters? You will have to see how the purples and yellows swirl on the ice floes in Patagonia to write it with authenticity. The heat of India? On a train? At rush hour? Being pushed to and fro by the crowd? You have to be there. You have to smell the elephant dung in the air, burn your tongue on the molé, distinguish the subtle changes in sounds of the dialects in Dresden, watch the seasons change at 15,000 feet in Nepal, feel the handlebars vibrate on the cobblestone streets. Beijing? Tasmania? Marrakesh? You have to live it.

In April of 2007, while in a PhD program in creative writing at Binghamton University, I attended a Fulbright information session and discovered a little-known fact: the prestigious Fulbright Award is for creative areas also. It is for undergraduates, graduates, and doctoral students. For musicians, writers, actors, filmmakers, artists, and dancers. I even learned that a nonstudent can apply as an independent. Age? Not an issue.

And so began my great adventure.

The Fulbright Program is an international exchange program for students, scholars, and professionals to conduct international research, graduate study, university study, and teaching funded by an appropriation from Congress to the Department of State. Though the program began in 1946 to promote mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries, the Fulbright-Hays Act of 1961, proposed by Arkansas senator J. William Fulbright, provided the authorization. The program is dedicated to expanding positive relations between the United States and other countries with the aim of creating a true and lasting peace.

It was Kim Connel, a student in the MFA program at the University of Arkansas when I was an undergraduate, who first inspired me with the story of his Fulbright to Africa. But I was a single mother and did not know that the Fulbright not only allows family members to accompany the recipients of the awards but also increases the award slightly to accommodate them. Since then, I have learned of many single mother Fulbright Fellows, including medical student Rebecca Trotsky-Sirr, who spent her Fulbright year with her son in Venezuela, visiting rural health clinics.

With my inspiration still alive, I approached the Fulbright Program advisors at Binghamton, Susannah Gal and Elizabeth Tucker, with my idea. I had read Under the Still Standing Sun (Kindred Press, 1989), a historical novel by Canadian Dora Dueck about the Ukrainian Mennonite refugees who arrived in the inhospitable Chaco region of Paraguay in 1930, and I wanted to write a novel about the contemporary conditions of these refugees. I formulated my proposal, sought out sponsors in Paraguay, and took the necessary language tests. In April of 2008, I learned the news: I was accepted. By the end of August, after a July orientation in Washington, DC, with other bursting-with-enthusiasm Fulbright Fellows, I was in Asunción, Paraguay, and on my way to Filadelfia, the Chaco. The Fulbright grant covered my round-trip air fare, a generous monthly stipend for the ten-month period, and cash for research materials. I soon moved in with a Mennonite family.

A room of my own and a stipend. A writer’s dream.

Even more luck came my way, and I was able to spend two months in Yalve Sanga, a Nivaclé and Enlhet village about twenty miles from Filadelfia. I was able to walk the sandy roads, attend Saturday night music concerts and Sunday church, experience the 120-degree heat, teach in the schools, ride my bicycle for miles, read books not available in the United States, interview Enlhet, Nivaclé, Mennonite, and Paraguayan leaders, and write articles which I published in Canada and the United States. By May I had finished my novel, Chaco . In June I reluctantly left my new friends and home.

I will never be the same. My heart will always be in Paraguay.

“With the Fulbright I took myself more seriously as a writer,” says Gail M. Dottin, Fulbright Fellow to Panama in 2008-9. “I have a deeper understanding of my need to write. I have much more respect for my work and my process. I see more clearly what my writing career can look like and what other things it can lead to. It changed everything.” Gail M. Dottin’s project, a historical memoir, Where There Is Pride in Belonging, about her Barbadian grandfather’s work on the construction of the Panama Canal in the early 1900s and about her father’s life both on the Canal Zone and in the United States, involved interviewing family members, younger Panamanians, to get their perspective on growing up in Panama and researching the history of the canal builders. “At the national library, I dug through the issues of an old newspaper written by and for the West Indian Panamanian community in the middle of the last century,” she says.

Erika Martinez, Fulbright Fellow to the Dominican Republic for 2008-9, was able “to take the entire academic year to connect with the literary community in Santo Domingo [and] to conduct a call-for-submissions process for Daring to Write: Contemporary Narratives by Dominican Women (University of Georgia Press, 2016), and I was able to dedicate more time to my own writing.” In addition, she teamed up with Meg Petersen, a Fulbright Scholar in Santo Domingo, to teach a creative writing course.

Katrina Vandenberg, a 1999–2000 Fulbright Fellow to the Netherlands now teaching at the MFA program at Hamline University in Minneapolis, worked on a book of poems tentatively called “Vermeer's Women.” She wrote poems that resulted in the book, Atlas: Poems (Milkweed Editions, 2004), in a tea shop in a cathedral in Utrecht. The book’s centerpiece is a section called “The Red Fields of Lisse (A Love Story).” “It weaves together the history of the tulip with the death of my former partner who had hemophilia and was infected with HIV through the blood supply,” she says, “It was all the walking through flower markets, and biking and taking trains past tulip fields, that did it.”

Poet and novelist Jillian Weise ( The Amputee’s Guide to Sex , Soft Skull, 2007; The Colony , Soft Skull, 2010; Book of Goodbyes , BOA Editions, 2013), now a tenure-track assistant professor of English at Clemson University, was a 2008–2009 Fulbright Fellow to Argentina. “The Fulbright supports wild ideas. My wild idea was to live at the end of the world and follow Darwin’s ghost around for a novel I was writing. I didn't use the word ‘ghost’ on the application, but that was the idea. Because of the Fulbright, I met Darwin in places like the Darwin Bar, the Beagle Channel, and San Martin Street. I finished a novel in which Darwin is a central character. Once someone supports your wild idea, it starts feeling real and wildly possible,” she says. Jillian Weise also completed a novel while on fellowship, called The Colony (Soft Skull, 2010). She wrote in cafes and pubs as well as at a defunct maximum-security prison (now the Museo Maritimo) and on a boat while touring the Beagle Channel. Her advice for Fulbright applicants? “As cheesy as it may sound, the Creative Writing Fulbright will change you in ways that you cannot imagine. Apply for some place that’s always seemed a little out of reach, a little impossible. Some place of mythos and intrigue,” she says.

M. Thomas Gammarino was a 2000–2001 Fulbright Fellow to Japan, an experience that spawned the idea for a novel, Big in Japan (Chin Music Press, 2009). “The idea grew largely out of a class I took while I was studying at Doshisha University in Kyoto during my Fulbright year. The class was entitled ‘Japan in the American Imagination,’ taught by a Professor Jonathan Veitch.” He wrote mainly at home and in cafes. He carried around a notebook, aimlessly wandering, talking to people, visiting temples and museums, traveling around the country, giving out tea and blankets to the homeless, and riding a BMX bike with some local kids at Kyoto Station.

When I was a temporary lecturer at Concord University in West Virginia, I organized the art department to send art supplies and form a sister relationship with the art club I started in Yalve Sanga, Paraguay, with the hope of fulfilling a part of the purpose of the Fulbright to promote mutual understanding.

I will also be hosting a panel on the Creative Writing Fulbright at the March 2020 convention of the Association of Writers & Writing Programs in San Antonio, where a group of Fulbright creative writing fellows will be present to answer your questions and encourage you in your own great expectations of travel, research, and writing abroad. There you can meet University of Houston Assistant Professor Daniel Peña (Garcia Robles Fulbright Scholar to Mexico, 2014–15), who says that he could not have written his novel Bang (Arts Publico, 2018), based on real events, without the Fulbright. “I knew if I was going to write about the drug war in Mexico, it was not enough to read the statistics and reportage alone. It was essential to go there, to give that information and those stories context and texture. It was very important for me to explore the characters in my novel with as much depth and dignity as possible—to get them right,” Peña says.

“My Fulbright year was my first experience of true creative and intellectual freedom. I was allowed—encouraged—to follow my project wherever it led, however it changed. I knew my work and my project better afterward; I knew myself better afterward, too,” says Fulbright Fellow Elisa Gonzalez (Poland, 2016–18) who will also be on the panel. Panelist Eireene Nealand, who spent her Fulbright year in Bulgaria (2014–15), says, “I’m happy to be able to say that I literally built a frame for the documentary book I created as part of my Fulbright research grant. True to the Fulbright philosophy of emphasizing human connection over production, The Nest (Nova Kultura Foundation, 2016) gathered itself up slowly, over sketchbooks, cups of tea, and the chance discovery of a festival I quickly fell in love with.” You will also be able to meet Serena Chopra, Fulbright Fellow to Bangalore, India, from 2016–17.

If you are a student, look for announcements about Fulbright information sessions on your campus. You can visit the websites associated with the State Departmen t or the Institute of International Education for more information. If you are not a student, find information on these websites about applying “at large.”

Gail M. Dottin advises you to “have a clear idea about what you want to write about and try to communicate that well in your application. Sounds kind of obvious but it’s one of the most important things you can do, to think about what it is you want to get from the place you’re going to and how you’re going to get it. Then if you get the Fulbright, just be open. Throw the plan away because much of you what you wrote in your proposal and you envisioned will not happen. But what will happen, if you’re open and flexible, will be even richer.”

Best of luck to you!

Katherine Arnoldi ’s graphic novel The Amazing True Story of a Teenage Single Mom was named one of the top ten books of the year by Entertainment Weekly . Her collection of short stories, All Things Are Labor , won the Juniper Prize. She has received the Henfield TransAtlantic Fiction Award, the DeJur Award, two New York Foundation of the Arts Awards (Fiction and Drawing), American Library Awards, the Newhouse and Link Awards, and a nomination for the Will Eisner Award. She was a Fulbright Fellow to Paraguay 2008–9.

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Fulbright Grants: An Untapped Resource for Writers

Writers looking for real-world experience—beyond what an MFA program or a writers colony can offer—might be surprised to learn that the prestigious Fulbright grant, thought by many to support only scholars of academic projects, offers aid to creative writers, too.

Fulbright Applications

The Fulbright application provides clear guidelines for writing a successful application. For both Statements,

• Provide concrete examples (your experiences and your plans)
• Focus on one theme or story related to your personal development and how that relates to your goals
• Clearly articulate what will make your proposed research project or teaching assistantship successful
• Include clear transitions between parts of your essay
• Make every word count

Statement of Grant Purpose

Academic fields.

• Do you tell the Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How of your proposed year?
• Is your project description Strong, Feasible, and Compelling ?
• Can you complete then research in this timeframe?
• Are necessary resources (including people) available?
• Is the purpose for the research clear?
• Is the expected benefit or need for the project persuasive?
• Is it clear why you want to pursue this graduate program in this institution in this host country ?
• How do your goals align ?
• Do you indicate a clear commitment to the host country community?
• Have you explained how you will engage with that community?

Teaching Assistantship

• Do you explain why you want to teach English to non-native speakers?
• Do you explain why you want to teach in this host country ?
• Have you included what strengths you will bring to the host country's classroom?
• Do you show you're aware of the host country's traditions and that you are willing and able to adapt to those pedagogical traditions (with concrete examples)?

Personal Statement

• How have your personal history, family background, intellectual development and/or educational, professional, or cultural opportunities influenced you?
• Is your story of this trajectory cohesive?
• Have you described your plans and goals ?
• Is it clear what in your background prepares you for this Fulbright opportunity?
• Internships
• Personal Travel or Study Abroad
• Volunteering
• Teaching or tutoring
• How might you apply your experiences from the above areas to your goals for the Fulbright year? (e.g., leadership, interpersonal, intercultural, teaching approaches, communication style, etc.)

More Information

For more information, visit Global Initiatives .

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Penn Fulbrighters for 2022-23

The Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships (CURF) wishes to heartily congratulate Penn students and alums who have been offered Fulbright grants for the 2022-2023 academic year. The awards are announced on a rolling basis, determined by the host country. This list is current as of May 23. See this story for the 2021-22 Finalists.

Fulbright Study/Research Grant

Aishwarya Balaji COL '22 Frankfort, KY (Research-Germany)

Aishwarya Balaji has been awarded a Fulbright Grant to conduct research in Germany at the German Primate Center. Aishwarya is majoring in psychology and minoring in chemistry. Aish works as an undergraduate researcher in Dr. Michael Platt's lab. She began her work with Dr. Platt through the MINDCORE fellowship and continued this work through the Evolution and Development of Mind internship. In addition to her research interests, she has served as an active member of the Panhellenic community as a member of the Panhellenic Council and as the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion chair of Zeta Tau Alpha. She has also served as a MEDLIFE board member, organic chemistry lab teaching assistant, and a math tutor. Upon return to the U.S., she plans to pursue a career in medicine.

Gavin Blasdel GAS Baltimore, MD (Research-Greece)

Gavin Blasdel has been awarded a Fulbright Grant to conduct research in Greece. Gavin is a PhD candidate writing about the inscribed honorific statue monuments of Athens during the Roman Empire, which he studies from a combined epigraphical, material, and spatial perspective. He has presented his work at conferences and invited lectures in the USA, Canada, Britain, Greece, Italy, and France. An active field archaeologist with a decade of experience in the eastern Mediterranean, especially at the port of Kenchreai near Corinth, Blasdel was previously a fellow of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and has studied at the British School at Athens. Prior to Penn, he received his B.A. from Loyola University Maryland and his M.A. from Vanderbilt University.

Sonali Deliwala COL '22 Yardley, PA (Research-India)

Sonali Deliwala has been awarded a Fulbright grant to conduct research in India. Sonali is majoring in political science and economics with a minor in creative writing. A first-generation Indian-American passionate about fighting systemic injustice, she has gained extensive policy research experience at numerous organizations, including the DC Congressional Office of Representative Pramila Jayapal, the Brookings Institution, and the Council on Foreign Relations. She been heavily involved in the Philly-based grassroots organization #VoteThatJawn, working as a Teaching Assistant for the Academically Based Community Service Course "Writing and Politics," a Youth Leader, and a student reporter to get 18-year-olds registered to vote and first-time voters to the polls for the 2018 midterms and 2020 general election. Deliwala also founded SEAS Wellness, the Engineering school's only student-led group focused on SEAS students' mental health advocacy. As President of the club, she worked with administration and faculty to implement wellness-friendly academic policies and gave brief, informative presentations for hundreds of students in introductory courses to promote usage of wellness resources. Deliwala has held various positions in political science and economic research, a Spring 2021 Fellow for Penn's Program on Public Opinion Research & Election Studies (PORES), a Summer 2021 Fox Fellowship at Brookings, and serving as a research assistant for multiple Penn faculty. She was also awarded the 2019 Terry B. Heled Travel & Research Grant to document the lives of an indigenous community in her family’s hometown in India as well as the 2020-2021 U.S. Department of Education’s Foreign Language Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship. Deliwala is also a member of the Radical South Asian Collective, an organization formed to create awareness on social and political issues relating to the South Asian diaspora and advocate for the implementation of anti-caste discriminatory policies at Penn.

Alice Heyeh COL '22 Chappaqua, NY (Study-UK)

Alice Heyeh has been awarded a Fulbright grant to study in the UK.  Alice is majoring in Communication with a concentration in Culture and Society, along with minors in Design and Consumer Psychology. Her coursework has covered digital inequalities, artificial intelligence, and technology in the Global South. At Penn, she was previously the Arts Editor for 34th Street Magazine, where she was awarded a Columbia Gold Circle Award for her design work. Heyeh has also served as an Emma Bowen Fellow, design intern for The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Community Engagement Fellow at Civic House. At Civic House, she interned with the non-profit, Asian Americans United (AAU) through COVID-19 and the 2020 presidential election. At Penn, Heyeh has also been a member of the Asian American Studies Undergraduate Advisory Board and the Asian Pacific American Leadership Initiative (APALI). As a recipient of the US-UK Fulbright Arts Award, Heyeh will pursue a Masters degree in Communication Design at Northumbria University, where she will study the intersection of design and artificial intelligence. Through her research, Heyeh hopes to mitigate algorithmic bias through equitable design systems.

Anuj Krishnamurthy Engineering South Brunswick, NJ (Study-UK)

Anuj Krishnamurthy has been offered a Fulbright to pursue a master's degree in the United Kingdom. He is a student in the online computer and information technology program in the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Shaila Lothe COL/WH '22 Richmond, VA (Research-Mexico)

Shaila Lothe has been awarded a Fulbright grant to conduct research in Mexico. Shaila is pursuing a dual degree, majoring in political science in the College of Arts and Sciences, concentrating in behavioral economics in the Wharton School, and minoring in Hispanic Studies. Outside of the classroom, she served as the President of Wharton Undergraduates in Public Policy, Director of Trade and Foreign Policy for the Wharton Public Policy Initiative Student Group, and Digital Director for Penn Appetit. She also participated in behavioral economics research and served as a teaching assistant for two behavioral economics courses. She is a Wharton Research Scholar, Global Research & Internship Program participant, and Social Impact Research Experience participant. During her Fulbright year, she will work in a Mexican company and take business courses. Upon returning to the U.S., she plans to work in consulting in New York.

Brendan Lui COL '22 Potomac, MD (Study-Germany)

Brendan Lui has been awarded a Fulbright grant to study in Germany. Brendan is a senior in the College majoring in Political Science with a concentration in comparative politics, and hopes to pursue a Master's in Political Science at the University of Cologne this fall. On campus, Brendan is a Wolf Humanities Undergraduate Fellow and an undergraduate grant recipient with the Andrea Mitchell Center for the Study of Democracy. For his senior honors thesis, Brendan conducted original, independent research on variation in construction trade union behavior towards migrant workers in the advanced industrial democracies. Outside the classroom, he works with the Philadelphia chapter of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), serving as an Organizing Fellow, a facilitator of the Worker Outreach Group, and a member of APALA's national Young Leaders Council. He has also spent time organizing with UNITE HERE Local 274, Philadelphia's service and hospitality workers union.

Amin Marei GSE '23 Philadelphia, PA (Research-Jordan)

Amin Marei has been awarded a Fulbright grant to conduct research in Jordan. Amin is a third-year Ph.D. Candidate in Penn GSE’s Education, Culture, and Society program. Amin’s research explores the affordances and limitations of utilizing virtual environments to support high-quality learning experiences. Amin holds a Master’s degree from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. Amin is a recipient of multiple awards and fellowships, including Penn’s Provost Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Innovation, Harvard’s Intellectual Contribution Award, and Harvard’s Public Service Fellowship.

Zonía Moore PSOM MD Bridgetown, Barbados & Sewickley, PA (Research-Mexico)

Zonía Moore has been awarded a Fulbright grant to conduct research in Mexico. Zonía is a MD candidate at Perelman School of Medicine at The University of Pennsylvania. After graduating from Dartmouth College with a degree in Hispanic Studies and Romance languages & literatures, she worked for 3 years in consulting and corporate strategy. Zonía completed multiple projects utilizing innovation and design-thinking techniques to develop new technical product ideas. At the Boston Consulting Group, she ran a workshop and collaborated on two ideas for technological innovation to replace long distance radars that were eventually selected by the client for investment. She co-led a team that placed 3rd at a Startup Entrepreneurship Competition with a focus on developing an innovative business model to address a health problem. In addition to working in the wards of the hospital, Zonía is currently studying to finish her MD. Zonía enjoys playing tennis, writing poetry, taking photos, playing piano, and singing. She can be reached at zoniamoore.com and on twitter @tzoniaa.

Rebecca Morse COL '22 Acton, MA (Research-Switzerland)

Rebecca Morse has been awarded a Fulbright grant to conduct research in Switzerland at the University of Geneva, researching the effect of previous acute infections on COVID-19 vaccine responses. As a transfer student, Morse previously worked in Dr. Janice Knepper’s lab at Villanova, which studied a gene contributing to aggressive behavior in tumor cells. After transferring to Penn, she was selected to research in the Undergraduate Translational Research Immersion Program. During this experience, she studied women's health with Dr. Mary Regina Boland and published a paper characterizing postpartum depression and its risk factors. Currently, she is pursuing a thesis investigating the metabolism of T cell immunotherapies in Dr. James Riley’s lab. At Penn, she has advocated for transfer students as the VP of Admissions and Co-VP of Mentorship in the Transfer Student Organization, as well as served as a mentor through CURF's Research Peer Advisor Program and the Netter Center's GEAR UP tutoring program. Morse plans to pursue a PhD and career in immunology and virology research while developing a mentorship program for young scientists.

Wil Prall GAS Philadelphia, PA (Research-France)

Wil Prall has been awarded a Fulbright grant to conduct research in France. Wil is a PhD candidate focusing on mRNA in Arabidopsis Thaliana (a small flowering plant found in Eurasia and Africa). During his graduate studies Wil was a recipient of the Chateaubriand Fellowship, conducting part of his thesis work at The Universite Paris-Saclay. While at Penn Wil has been awarded the Teece Research Award and serves as the Mentor Fellow and program organizer for PennFERBS, a fellowship aimed on developing the next generation of premier scientists and STEM leaders through guided mentorship and education. FERBS a program focused on creating a more diverse and inclusive environment in the biological research sciences, is a collaborative effort supported through Penn First Plus, The Department of Biology, Biochemistry and Biophysics, and the Stravros Niarchos Foundation. Outside his graduate work, Wil is a passionate advocate for education equity and works with West Philadelphia-Based PALMS Solutions to coordinate community education and outreach. Awarded a Fulbright Fellowship, Wil plans to continue his thesis work in France at the Universite Paris-Saclay, at The Institut Des Sciences Des Plantes De Paris-Saclay in the Lab of Dr. Martin Crespi. Upon returning to the US, Wil plans to continue his education and training in a Post-doctoral research position.

Kaitlyn Rentala COL '22 Rye, NY (Research-EU)

Kaitlyn Rentala has been awarded a Fulbright grant to conduct research via the European Union Schuman Program, studying the intersection of EU tech policy and political philosophy. Kaitlyn is majoring in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) with a concentration in globalization in the College of Arts and Sciences. At Penn, Rentala is a teaching assistant for LGST 100: Ethics and Social Responsibility in Wharton and co-director of The Signal, a student organization dedicated to promoting alternative career paths. As an Andrea Mitchell Center Research Fellow and a recipient of the Ruth Marcus Kantor Research Grant, Rentala is passionate about researching the intersection of technology policy and democratic theory as a vehicle for technological reform. She has worked in the technology policy space as an intern with the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement and the think tank New America. In addition, Rentala is the author of The Public Sector Pivot: How Gen Z Will Lead a Renaissance in Public Service, a book about improving the public sector talent pipeline for college students. She has served as a consultant on public service recruitment issues to a number of non-profit and government organizations including the think tank The Volcker Alliance and the Department of Defense. Kaitlyn is a recipient of a Fulbright-Schuman research grant to the European Union and will spend the 2022-2023 academic year in Germany and the Netherlands conducting research at the intersection of EU tech policy and political philosophy. Upon returning to the U.S., she plans to pursue a JD/PhD in philosophy with the eventual goal of becoming a law professor.

Anyara Rodriguez COL '22 Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (Research-Germany)

Anyara Rodriguez has been awarded a Fulbright grant to study the sleep and circadian influences on memory retrieval in the laboratory of Dr. Martha Merrow at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. Sheis majoring in Neuroscience and Political Science, with a minor in Chemistry. During her time at Penn, Anyara has had the opportunity to be involved in various research experiences. Since her freshmen year, she has been part of the Kayser Lab, studying sleep and neurodegeneration in a Drosophila model. She is completing her senior thesis in the lab, using sleep as a platform to study the genetic modifiers of TDP-43 toxicity. During her Junior year, Anyara was also a research assistant to Dr. Laura Gibson, studying the impact of privacy messaging on COVID exposure app downloads. She is also part of the Tiempo Juntos por Nuestra Salud (Time Together for our Health) team with Dr. Adriana Perez, a community-based health intervention for Spanish speaking Latinos with MCI. Outside of her research interests, Anyara is a valuable member of Penn's Artistic Swimming team and has had leadership positions in Alpha Phi Omega National Service Fraternity.

Lily Snider COL '20 Research-Portugal

Lily Snider has been offered a grant to conduct research in Portugal. Lily majored in English and Creative Writing. Whilst at Penn, she worked as Assignments Editor at 34th Street Magazine, and was a PennQuest Leader. Lily completed a Creative Writing Honors Thesis in her final year, and has continued with her creative pursuits post-grad while living and working Los Angeles, California. She will be completing a nonfiction research-based creative writing project in the Azores, Portugal, where her family of origin is from.

Irene Yee COL '22 Research-Sweden

Irene Yee has been offered a grant to conduct research in Sweden. Irene is majoring in neuroscience and double minoring in chemistry and gender studies. At Penn, Yee conducts research with the Ganetzky Lab at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia on mitochondrial complex V diseases. Yee also works at the Weingarten Center, tutoring students in organic chemistry and physics. She is also a tutor mentor for the Weingarten Center, and is part of the team developing new workshop programs for the Chemistry department. She is also the founder of Dissent, an intersectional feminist literary magazine that seeks to hold space for marginalized communities at Penn. Yee is also a member of Gryphon Senior Society and the Transfer Student Organization at Penn. After Fulbright, Yee intends to pursue an MD-PhD degree.

Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA)

Lilian Chen NURS/WH '22 San Jose, CA (ETA-Taiwan)

Lilian Chen has been awarded a Fulbright grant to teach English in Taiwan. Lilian Chen is majoring Nursing and Healthcare Management through the dual degree program between Penn Nursing and the Wharton School. She is the recipient of the 2018 Aspiring Nurse Scholarship and a Johnson & Johnson Nursing/Wharton Impact Scholar. She has interned at various healthcare organizations such as Kaiser Permanente and Independence Blue Cross. Lilian was previously a member of the Kite and Key Society and gave campus tours to prospective students. She also was a Wharton Passion Project fellow where she created an initiative called Operation Ukulele and taught fellow classmates and children at the local library how to play the ukulele and experience its musical benefits. Lilian has a deep interest for learning languages and wants to become fluent in Japanese and Mandarin to be able to translate for patients in healthcare. She is also a servant in Renewal College Fellowship and enjoys organizing events and community group meetings for her church. Upon returning to the U.S., Lilian hopes to work as a pediatric nurse for a few years and plans to move abroad to work in medical missions.

Ria Chinchankar WH '22 Dubai, UAE (ETA-Mexico)

Ria Chinchankar has been awarded a Fulbright grant to teach English in Mexico.  During her time at Penn she has been involved with the Asian American and Pacific Islander community, including facilitating the Asian Pacific American Leadership Initiative (APALI) through PAACH, taking Asian American Studies courses, and participating in the Radical South Asian Collective. She was also a member of the Penn Association for Gender Equity and the Wharton Council. For her senior thesis, she investigated questions of ethical artificial intelligence through the Wharton Research Scholars program.

Amira Chowdhury COL/SP2 '22 Glendale, CA (ETA-Timor-Leste)

Amira Chowdhury has been awarded a Fulbright grant to teach English in Timor-Leste. Amira is majoring in Urban Studies and Political Science and minoring in Urban Education. She is also pursuing her Masters in Social Policy from the School of Social Policy and Practice. As a first-generation low-income Bangladeshi immigrant, Amira is deeply passionate about grassroots political advocacy and literacy education to uplift historically marginalized people. Amira is the founder and President of Penn Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) politics, a founding member of Penn Justice Democrats, program Director of Penn Model Congress, and writer/interviewer for the Penn Political Review. As a Penn Civic Scholar, Amira voluntarily tutored Bangladeshi Philadelphia students at the nonprofit Moder Pathshala and later pursued her Teaching Speakers of Other Languages certification from the UPenn Graduate School of Education with a scholarship from the Milken Institute. Amira has taught Philadelphia adults at the Community Learning Center and received the Hassenfeld grant to led her independent ethnographic research studying the language acculturation of Philadelphia adult immigrants. As an adult literacy researcher in the Penn Libraries Community Engagement team, she developed West Philadelphia's first conversation-based English language program, developed curriculum, and taught local adult immigrants. To explore her interests in public policy, Amira has interned with Congressman Dwight Evans, the Public Citizens for Children & Youth and the Center for Political Accountability. In the fall of her senior year, Amira participated in the Penn in Washington program, where she worked as a state fiscal policy intern in D.C. and learned Greek while studying abroad in Greece during the spring. Amira plans to attend law school in the future and advance social policy reforms through the legal field.

Luke Coleman COL '22 Dayton, OH (ETA-Spain)

Luke Coleman has been awarded a Fulbright grant to teach English in Spain. Luke is majoring in philosophy, politics, and economics with a concentration in public policy and governance and double minors in Hispanic studies and survey research & data analytics. As a low-income student of color, Luke has become committed to improving the quality of public education, developing an education program at the Netter Center for Community Partnerships for tutors in West Philadelphia. Coleman serves as the co-leader of the anti-racism working group at the Netter Center, the Director of Tutor Education for the Penn Reading Initiative, the first DEI Chair of Alpha Kappa Psi, and a member of the Netter Center's student advisory board. A research assistant at both Penn Law’s Borders and Boundaries Project and the Penn Program for Opinion Research and Election Studies, Coleman is the recipient of the Zell-Lurie Real Estate Center's Award for excellence in public policy, the recipient of the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Involvement Award, a member of the Pi Sigma Alpha political science honor society, and a two-time recipient of the Netter Center's named intern award. As a recipient of the Fulbright, Coleman will teach English to students in Madrid and prepare them for competitions with the Model UN. He will dedicate his service project to refugee resettlement and advocacy for the unhoused. Upon returning to the U.S., he plans to pursue a dual degree in law and public policy and engage in criminal justice reform domestically.

Robin Hu COL '22 Los Angeles, CA (ETA-Taiwan)

Robin Hu has been awarded a Fulbright grant to teach English in Taiwan. Robin will graduate in May with a bachelor's in communication, concentration in data & network science, and minor in chemistry. She was awarded a Fulbright to teach English in Taiwan. Robin has tutored immigrant and refugee youth in Philadelphia, tutored students based in Shanghai, and mentored youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities. On campus, Hu has been an undergraduate teaching assistant and TA trainer for two years, an undergraduate representative of the Student Health Advisory Board, and a resident advisor in Harnwell College House. An United Nations Millennium Fellow and Annenberg in Public Service Award recipient, Hu is also a College House Research Fellow and winner of the Class of 1980 Intern Award for her work with the Netter Center for Community Partnerships and Sayre Health Center. Hu has worked with the University of Botswana's eHealth Research Unit and the Atluri Cardiovascular Research Lab at Penn. After Fulbright, she will be attending Harvard Medical School.

J’Aun Johnson COL '22 Bowie, MD (ETA-Colombia)

J’Aun Johnson has been awarded a Fulbright grant to teach English in Colombia. J’Aun Johnson is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences majoring in Dual Romance Languages, with a concentration in French and Hispanic Studies, along with a minor in Chemistry. A Questbridge Scholar, Penn College Achievement Program Scholar (PennCAP) and a Johnson Scholar, Johnson embraces his FGLI identity and has taken advantage of various opportunities that Penn has to offer in order to pursue a diverse curriculum in the humanities and natural sciences. His studies of modern languages was inspired by his desire for community engagement. He has worked with students in the classrooms of West Philadelphia Public Schools through CitySTEP, an organization whose outreach is dedicated to mentorship through dance, as well as through the Netter Center’s Francophone Community Partnership where he helps facilitate the instruction and discussion of francophone language and culture during a weekly after school program. He is a proud member of the Bollywood fusion dance team Penn Masti and a brother of Phi Delta Epsilon, a national fraternity for Medical and Pre-medical students. With the Fulbright Grant, Johnson intends to fulfill his obligations as an English teaching assistant while also volunteering in community clinics to continue his mastery of the hispanic language in a clinical environment.

Jordyn Kaplan COL '22 Media, PA (ETA-Spain)

Jordyn Kaplan has been awarded a Fulbright grant to teach English in Spain. Jordyn will graduate in May with a bachelor's degree in American history and minors in urban education and political science. As a seventh grade literature teacher with Breakthrough Collaborative, a tutor with West Philadelphia Tutoring Project, and a teaching assistant with Community School Student Partnerships, Jordyn has developed a pedagogical approach that empowers students to actively engage in their learning. At Penn, Jordyn serves as the Vice President of External Affairs on Class Board 2022 and as the Outreach Chair for The Kite & Key Society, Penn’s tour guide organization. She has amplified teachers’ voices on Research for Action’s National Lead Teacher Certification project and has volunteered in leadership roles within Penn Hillel and the Beta Alpha chapter of Chi Omega. Jordyn is eager to help students in Madrid develop a love of learning and to immerse herself in Spain's rich history and culture. Upon returning to the United States, Jordyn intends to pursue a master's degree in education and secondary teaching certification to teach high school history.

Erin Kraskewicz COL '22 Elizabethtown, PA (ETA-Spain)

Erin Kraskewicz has been awarded a Fulbright grant to teach English in Spain. Erin Kraskewicz is double-majoring in International Relations and History with particular interests in international law and organizations, human rights, and U.S.-China relations. Erin is the Vice President of the International Affairs Association, working to promote international relations education, programming, and community to Penn students and Philadelphians more broadly. She is passionate about academic publication, serving as the Deputy Print Editor and Co-Online Editor for the Sigma Iota Rho Journal of International Relations and working as an office assistant for the Penn Law Review. Erin spent summer 2021 working as a human rights intern for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in Geneva, furthering her desire to work in international human rights post graduation. In the fall, Erin studied history for a semester at the University of Cambridge, further honing her critical thinking and academic writing skills. For the past six years, Erin has also worked as a swimming instructor in Philadelphia and in her hometown. Erin's favorite parts about being a swim teacher are being able to grow a swimmer's confidence, develop their fine motor and attention skills, and promote water safety. Erin hopes to continue teaching, researching, and learning in this next chapter of her life.

Becca Lee COL '20 Pittsburgh, PA (ETA-Taiwan)

Becca Lee has been awarded a Fulbright grant to teach English in Taiwan. Becca graduated with a major in biochemistry and a minor in sociology in 2020 from the College, and with a master's degree in chemistry in 2021 from the School of Arts and Sciences. As a student, Lee was deeply involved in genetics research and volunteering with pediatric patients and their families at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. She is currently working at Penn as a research specialist and serves as an English teaching assistant for the immigrant and refugee populations of Philly at the Nationalities Service Center. She has been accepted to medical school in New Jersey and plans to attend upon her return.

Avneet Randhawa COL '21 Houston, TX (ETA-Spain)

Avneet Randhawa has been awarded a Fulbright grant to teach English in Spain. Graduating Phi Beta Kappa, Avneet majored in English with a concentration in twentieth and twenty-first century modernisms. She was the recipient of the Pincus-Magaziner research grant and Wolf Humanities fellowship. At Penn, Avneet was also involved with the Slought Foundation, Institute of Contemporary Arts Philadelphia, and Penn Book Center (People’s Books and Culture).

Stefan Tomov COL/WH '22 Las Vegas, NV (ETA-Taiwan)

Stefan Tomov has been awarded a Fulbright grant to teach English in Taiwan. Stefan is graduating from the College of Arts and Sciences with an International Studies major and a Chinese language certificate, as well as from the Wharton School with a concentration in Business Analytics. During his time at Penn, Stefan previously served as Treasurer of the Wharton Asia Exchange (WAX), co-Chair of Operations for the Penn Indonesian Conference, and a consultant in Penn International Impact Consulting. He is also a TA in the OIDD department. Stefan spent previous summers working in Jakarta and remotely in Shanghai, as well as studied abroad in Hong Kong at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He completed his senior honors thesis with Chang Sun Term Professor and Director of the Lauder Institute's Global Program Regina Abrami on the patterns of national recovery from supply chain crisis. In his career, Stefan plans to continue to bridge his interests in operations and international studies and will be going into consulting after graduation.

Chloe Zhou GSE '22 San Jose, CA (ETA-Taiwan )

Chloe Zhou (@penngse 2022), has been awarded a Fulbright grant to teach English in Taiwan. Chloe is currently in the Urban Teaching Apprenticeship Program and is getting certified to teach English in secondary classrooms and hopes to teach high school English in Philadelphia. As a queer womxn of color, they are passionate about promoting equity in their classrooms and being culturally responsive and anti-racist in their practice.

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Four Liberty University students awarded Fulbright grants

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May 7, 2024 : By Office of Communications & Public Engagement

Four Liberty University students were recently announced as finalists in the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, providing them with the opportunity to research and continue their studies internationally during the 2024-25 academic year.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program is a cultural exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government. The program operates in over 140 countries. Recipients are selected on the basis of academic and professional achievement as well as record of service and leadership potential in their respective fields. Finalists pursue graduate study, conduct research, or teach English abroad.

Olivia Mott, who graduates this spring with undergraduate degrees in Spanish and Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language (TESL), has received a grant to work as an English teaching assistant in Turkey. Mott previously spent one semester studying abroad in Ecuador. She first gained an interest in Turkey in high school when she volunteered in an English as a second language class and met a Turkish student.

“I knew nothing about this country and started being interested in the language,” Mott said. “I just really had this strong desire to go there and see what the culture is like too.”

Sophia Jantomaso, who will finish her master’s degree in English this May, will work as an English teaching assistant in Argentina. While there, she plans to start community groups such as a storytelling club. Prior to leaving for Argentina, she will spend a month over the summer working in the Andes Mountains of Peru and sharing the Gospel with the Quechan people group through multiple community outreach programs.

“I could not be more grateful or honored to be a part of the Fulbright community,” she said. “I know without the support around me I never could have made this journey. Thank you more than I can say to my community of co-workers, my students, and all my recommenders and professors who supported me so constantly. I cannot wait to see what building and participating in community looks like with the Fulbright program.”

Sadie DeShon will graduate with a bachelor’s in history and interdisciplinary studies , with a minor in TESL this spring. With her Fulbright grant, she’ll be serving as an English teaching assistant at Obchodná Akadémia (Business Academy) in Senica, Slovakia, where she will assist in English conversation, grammar, culture, and creative writing classes for high school-aged students.

“I first learned about the Fulbright U.S. Student Program in 2021, and I’ve wanted to pursue it since then, so receiving this grant is truly the fulfillment of years’ worth of preparing, hoping, and praying,” she said. “I’m especially grateful for the LU faculty, in particular (history professor) Dr. David Snead, (Fulbright program advisor and scholar liaison) Dr. Edna Udobong, and (modern languages assistant professor) Dr. Annik Miller, who made it possible by helping me hone my application, giving me sound advice, and encouraging me throughout this whole process. This opportunity is definitely a testament both to their patience and wisdom and to God’s provision.”

David Walker, who is pursuing a master’s in global studies , was awarded a Fulbright grant to Cambodia where he will serve as an English teaching assistant. He plans to collaborate with the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Youth to advocate for the rights of those affected by disabilities worldwide.

“It is an amazing opportunity to receive this award, and I feel grateful and excited about the new growth and service opportunities it offers for Christ,” he said. “It is a humbling experience to represent the U.S. as a cultural and Christ ambassador. This moment is even more special knowing all the hard work that the university scholarship office and Dr. (Edna) Udobong contributed to bring me here.”

Social studies education graduate Asha Gillette (’22) was named as a Fulbright alternate to Colombia.

Application for the 2025-26 Fulbright cycle is open. For more information, contact Associate Professor of Government Edna Udobong, Liberty’s Fulbright Program advisor and scholar liaison, at  [email protected] .

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Three UCSB graduate students win Fulbright Fellowships for teaching and research abroad

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The Fulbright U.S. Student Program is a highly competitive international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. In the 2024-25 award cycle, 10 students applied from UCSB, 1 was selected as a semi-finalist, 2 were selected as alternates, and 3 were selected as finalists. Congratulations to these outstanding students!

UC Santa Barbara's Graduate Division would like to recognize all of the talented students who participated in the 2024-25  Fulbright U.S. Student Program Award competition . This highly competitive program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. Recipients of Fulbright awards are selected on the basis of academic and professional achievement, as well as their record of service and leadership potential in their respective fields.

For the 2024-25 award cycle, 10 students applied from UCSB, 1 was selected as a semi-finalist, two were selected as alternates, and 3 were selected as finalists. Read on to find out more!

2024-25 Fulbright Finalist Award Winners

Selected list of 2024-25 fulbright semi-finalists.

Nirupama Chandrasekhar , Open Study/Research Award in Japan (Alternate) Elena Mailander , Open Study/Research Award in Japan (Alternate) Meagan Finlay , Open Study/Research Award in Japan (Semi-Finalist)

The 2025-26 Fulbright U.S. Student Program competition is open! Visit our Fulbright page to learn more.

Graduate College

16 students, alumni receive fulbright awards to travel abroad in 2024-25.

The 2025-26 Competition is now open. Applications must be submitted by the national deadline of October 8, 2024 at 5pm ET.

Current U.S. Student

United States citizens who are currently enrolled in undergraduate or graduate degree programs are eligible to apply.If you are currently enrolled in an undergraduate or graduate program at a U.S. college or university, you will apply through that institution, even if you are not currently a resident there. Find the Fulbright Program Adviser on your campus.

U.S. Citizen but not a Student

If you are a U.S. citizen, will hold a bachelor’s degree by the award start date, and do not have a Ph.D. degree, then you are eligible to apply. Non-enrolled applicants should have relatively limited professional experience in the fields (typically 7 years or less) in which they are applying. Candidates with more experience should consider applying for the Fulbright Scholar Program .

The Getting Started page will provide information on eligibility and next steps.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program welcomes applications in the creative and performing arts. Arts candidates for the U.S. Student Program should have relatively limited professional experience in the fields (typically 7 years or less) in which they are applying. Artists with more experience should consider applying for the Fulbright Scholar Program .

Creative & Performing Arts projects fall under the Study/Research grant category and are available in all countries where Study/Research grants are offered.

U.S. Professor/Administrator

If you are a U.S. citizen and a professor or administrator at a U.S. institution and are interested in applying for a Fulbright Scholar Award, you will need to apply through fulbrightscholars.org .

To support your students in applying for a U.S. Student Program award, please connect with the Fulbright Program Adviser at your institution.

Non U.S. Citizens

If you are a non-U.S. citizen interested in applying for a Fulbright Award to the United States, you will need to apply through the Fulbright Commission or U.S. Embassy in your home country. Find out more information on the Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program or Fulbright Foreign Student Program .

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• Europe & Eurasia
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1 Fulbright/University College Cork Masters in Creative Writing Award

Specialized grant types, fulbright graduate degree grants, award profile.

Grantee may pursue a taught Masters in Creative Writing at  University College Cork  which was established in 1845 as one of three Queen’s Colleges at Cork, Galway and Belfast.  Located on a beautiful, historic campus, University College Cork has grown from 115 students to over 20,000, from one building to dozens, from less than 20 staff to more than 1,600 today. The  MA in Creative Writing at University College Cork  encourages students to be curious about literature, to pursue creative excellence and to develop their writing in a university atmosphere. The course as a whole encourages and supports a full exploration of the creative self while also maintaining a strong vocational emphasis including professional placements. All of University College Cork’s courses are embedded in Cork’s dynamic creative milieu, rooted in expert practice and taught by highly accomplished professionals. A rich variety of modules are available, including Fiction, Poetry and Life Writing.

Grant Length

Grant period.

Commencing in September 2025.

Orientation

Orientation typically takes place in October once the majority of grantees are in-country.

Candidate Profile

The Commission is seeking applicants who:

• Possess excellence (academically, personally, professionally, creatively);
• Demonstrate leadership experience, attributes and, or potential;
• Outline a strong rationale and feasible methodology for pursuing a degree in University College Cork that indicates how a Fulbright to Ireland fits into their longer term goals;
• Demonstrate the benefit of becoming a Fulbrighter; to themselves (personally and professionally), to their discipline, to society, to Ireland, to the Fulbright Program / Commission and to the US when they return;
• Extend themselves beyond their project / studies to become actively involved in Irish society and the work of the Fulbright Commission.  The Commission is keen to support projects that brings awardees into contact with a wide range of stakeholders, particularly outside of academia, to maximize their academic / cultural exchange experience and to raise awareness of the Fulbright Program in Ireland.

University College Cork will consider applications from graduates of all disciplines. Applicants are expected to have a cumulative GPA of 3.2.  Applicants with relevant writing or arts experience (e.g. working in publishing, journalism or arts administration) are also invited to apply. All applicants will be asked to submit a piece of creative writing of 1000 words (any genre).

What is life like for Fulbrighters in the host country?

Ireland is a friendly, engaging and vibrant country with centuries of U.S. interaction as part of its DNA. As an increasingly diverse society with a highly educated workforce, competitive educational system and millennia of culture, it is a popular choice for U.S. Student applicants.

Higher education in Ireland is provided by 12 universities, 2 Institutes of Technology, and a number of specialist colleges in art, business, law, music, medicine and theology. There are also a significant number of well-funded research centres and cultural institutions that may be considered as host options.

Irish colleges typically operate on a two-semester academic year: September to December and January to May. Further information on higher education in Ireland can be found  here .

Most Higher Education Institutions are supported by the Irish government. For example, universities and Institutes of technology receive more than 90 percent of their income from the state. The Irish government has invested 2.5 billion euro establishing advanced centres of research, and world-class research facilities and programs that are an attractive destination for international exchange visitors.

Fulbright Alumni cite the following advantages associated with coming to Ireland: English-speaking; very welcoming; family-friendly; safe; intellectually challenging; culturally rich and diverse; and accessible. Please see the Commission’s  Coming to Ireland page  for more information and resources. Helpful advice on living and studying in Ireland can also be found on the official website of the Government of Ireland here .

Please contact the Fulbright Commission in Ireland via email at [email protected]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSqPQGZKWc0 – Irish Fulbright Commission

For further information on Fulbright Alumni, please see the Alumni Directory here . A complete list of Fulbright Campus Ambassadors is also available to search and view.

Eligibility

Degree level of applicant, foreign language proficiency, fulbright proposal types, affiliation.

Letter not required at deadline. Applicants will need to apply for admission to the Masters in Creative Writing as per University College Cork’s admissions procedures . Applicants are expected to have proof of acceptance onto the Masters in Creative Writing programme if offered a Fulbright award. The Fulbright Commission can assist with / advise on this process but applicants should make initial enquiries with the Director of Creative Writing, Dr Eibhear Walshe, email:  [email protected] prior to contacting the Commission.

Affiliation Fees/Tuition

Award benefits.

• A stipend broadly based on the cost of living in the host country. These funds may be used by the grantee to support housing, meals, and incidental costs during the grant period.
• International travel benefits
• Accident & sickness health benefits
• 24/7 mental health support line for urgent and non-urgent situations
• 12 months of non-competitive eligibility (NCE) hiring status within the federal government

Stipend Amount This is an estimated amount and is subject to change. The financial terms of the grant will be confirmed in the grant document issued after selection.

Estimated cost of living consider using cost of living comparison websites to gain a better understanding of the potential costs in your host country..

The estimated monthly cost of living is €1750 to €2000.

Dependents are not permitted to accompany applicants on grant.

Fulbright Program Management Contact

Fulbright commission/u.s. embassy website, fulbright commission/u.s. embassy contact, additional online resources.