Yearly Archives:

2011

U.S. Fulbright

An Education: Lessons from Rural China, By Cary Lin, 2010-2011, China

June 15, 2011

When the Airbus A320 began its descent towards Guiyang Dragon’s Cave Airport, I strained in my aisle seat to look out the window at what would become my home in China for the next ten months. The low-hanging clouds soon betrayed tiers of rice paddies etched into verdant hills, framed by Limestone Mountains cut precisely in the shape of Hershey’s Kisses. Ears popping and eyes closed, I mentally projected myself into the landscape below: I was a young girl sloshing through that field, trailing my mother and grandmother, hands and cheeks muddy.

The jolt of the plane landing on the runway soon brought me back to myself. Guizhou, landlocked and underdeveloped, is home to a number of the 55 state-designated ethnic minorities, such as the Miao, Dong and Buyi. As one of the first China Fulbright student fellows affiliated in Guizhou Province, I studied female educational opportunities in rural ethnic minority areas at Guizhou University in conjunction with my advisor at Beijing Normal University. My research eventually illustrated that the rift in educational quality and opportunity between urban and rural areas is enormous and persistent, and I had the chance to witness it firsthand.

I remember a particularly memorable trip I took into the countryside.  In December, I had the fortune of meeting with a group of school-aged girls enrolled in extracurricular English classes. Being of Asian descent, they at first could not believe I was American; why, I looked just like them! I told them that America was home to lots of different kinds of people and that I was a hua qiao, a Chinese term that essentially means “bridge between two cultures.” They looked amazed. I remember observing their proud gesticulations in class as they chanted: “Hello! I can speak English, so I want to talk with the world. English is beautiful! English is powerful!” They took my hands in theirs and peppered me with questions about America (“What is Disneyland like?” and “What do girls our age do?”). I taught them the Hokey Pokey that we gleefully danced together.

I constantly imagined myself in the shoes of most girls I met. Above all, empathy was the undercurrent upon which I built bridges of mutual understanding with others. When asked why I was in Guizhou studying rural education, I often told people that my mother too was from Guizhou, and that she had left the countryside to become a doctor. They understood. In the course of tracing her footsteps, her story paved the way for my Fulbright journey and its significance became ever clearer during my grant.  I now believe I arrived in Guizhou both blind and deaf until I opened my eyes and ears to the stories told by girls I met and who shared their lives and dreams with me, and I with them. I am thankful for the roads we walked together.

My advice for prospective candidates applying for study or research grants:

  1. Choose an issue or project that you are particularly passionate about. It will come across in your application, and your passion will help you persist when the going gets tough.
  1. Find a mentor or professor at your institution that is knowledgeable in your field of study. She or he will be a great resource for you when developing your application and finding a potential host affiliation.

Photo: Cary Lin, 2010-2011, China, and several young students in a school in Guizhou, China

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U.S. Fulbright

Rock ‘n’ Roll Fulbright: Thoughts from a Fulbright-mtvU Alumna

June 8, 2011

Katie was a 2008-2009 Fulbright-mtvU Fellow to Mexico. She currently lives and plays music in Chicago, while pursuing a PhD in Media, Technology, and Society at Northwestern University.

Have Hobbies. Will Travel.

Two years have passed since my Fulbright-mtvU project wrapped up in Mexico.  Today, I’m thrilled to be jumping back on the blogging bandwagon as a Fulbright Alumni Ambassador. Here, I won’t be talking (much) about Mexican music, but I will be trying to translate my experiences into news you can use for your own Fulbright goals.

As an alumni ambassador, I chat with a lot of prospective applicants about my Fulbright year. The best part of this gig is watching students’ surprised looks when I share the details of my project. Quite often, people can’t believe I played in a mariachi band and called that research. To tell you the truth, sometimes I can’t either.

Most people know that Fulbright grants allow people to carry out scholarly work abroad. Few, though, are aware of just how crazy-fun that can be. Hobbies and personal interests, it turns out, are a big factor in the success of Fulbright projects around the world. Yet too often, they go unmentioned in applicants’ essays.

Ever wonder why the application guidelines talk about “Community Engagement”? This criterion exists to ensure that grantees don’t go abroad just to work, but also to meet and connect with people, share ideas and snacks, and generally have a good time. Here, your hobbies are huge assets. Whether it’s rock climbing, hula-hooping, or something work-related but social in nature, consider how it might lead to new friendships abroad. Remember that your personal interests, like your research, can serve as bridges for building mutual understanding, Fulbright’s main goal.

Now, the case of the Fulbright-mtvU may be something of a freebie – most applicants for this music-focused grant are already huge fans of the phenomenon they’re proposing to study, so drawing a connection between research and Community Engagement is often fairly straightforward. In my project, for instance, it was my passion for folk music that powered my research, and vice-versa. I sang in a choir, interviewed indie rock musicians, and attended Mexico’s equivalent of country music camp. Other grantees whose projects are less fieldwork-oriented, however, may draw from their interests in different ways. Soccer tournaments become an avenue for meeting people outside the lab. Poetry slams provide a welcome change-up from studying manuscripts in archives.

Fulbrighters carry out international research through a dynamic mix of academic training and personal passions. So when you’re designing your dream project, don’t leave out your hobbies. Instead, ask how they might become a resource for connecting you—and your work—to the people around you when you travel abroad.

Katie (with guitar) and the student Mariachi ensemble of La Casa de la Música Mexicana in Mexico City

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U.S. Fulbright

The Role of the Spanish Constitutional Court in Shaping Immigrants’ Rights in Spain, By Cris Ramón, 2008-2009, Spain

May 11, 2011

In September 2008, I arrived in Madrid to study the legal rights of immigrants in Spain.  Much like Ireland and Italy, immigrants’ rights have become a major political and legal issue in Spain given the recent growth of its immigrant population.  For my Fulbright project, I analyzed the legal impact of seven sentences that the Spanish Constitutional Court issued against the Ley Orgánica 8/2000, a reform of Spain’s main immigration law.  The reform, which was introduced by center-right Partido Popular in 2000, stated that immigrants could not exercise certain constitutional rights such as the right to public assembly.  In 2007, the Court declared these provisions unconstitutional because they deny individuals Constitutional rights guaranteed to all.

My research focused on determining whether these sentences prompted legislators to further expand immigrants’ rights in additional law reforms.  I interviewed immigration attorneys, law professors, politicians from Spain’s main political parties, and non-governmental organization and labor union representatives.  I intended to understand how judicial and political concerns had shaped the original law.  I discovered that while legislators fulfilled the Court’s mandate to remove the unconstitutional provisions, political concerns regarding the Spanish economic crisis led them to restrict other fundamental rights to control the influx of immigrants.  In other words, political factors continued to limit immigrants’ legal rights despite the Court’s efforts to expand them.

In addition to my research, I worked with six fellow Fulbrighters, also studying immigration in Spain, to organize a conference titled, From Emigration to Immigration: Seven American Perspectives on Immigration in Spain.  It was a success on several levels.   We had a standing room only crowd, and an engaging discussion took place about how the United States and Spain can help each other improve their ability to assimilate immigrants.  Planning and executing this conference was definitely one of the highlights of my Fulbright grant!

The most fulfilling aspect of my time in Spain, however, was that my appreciation of immigrant aspirations, like those that inspired my parents to move to the United States, deepened based on conversations that I had with Spaniards I met and with whom I worked.  Since most probably hadn’t previously interacted with the American son of Salvadoran immigrants, these interactions became an opportunity to explain how my family’s story reflected the common immigrant aspiration to move to the United States in search of a better life.  Some Spaniards shared their own family’s emigrant history during and after the Spanish Civil War.  These conversations helped me to understand how powerful shared or similar experiences can be in connecting people.  My Fulbright grant has not only helped me feel more connected to Spain’s history of emigration and immigration, but also to my family’s own story.

Two pieces of advice for applicants pursuing study/research grants:

  • You’re a young professional with no immediate plans to attend grad school?  Apply!

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program welcomes applications from all individuals who are U.S. citizens and have at least a bachelor’s degree or equivalent, including young professionals who aren’t in grad school or currently enrolled in an academic program.  If you want to carry out research in a specific country, review the Fulbright Country Summaries to see if the country to which you’re applying prefers applicants who haven’t completed a graduate degree.  Also, make sure to get in touch with your alma mater to find out if they would be willing to assist with your At-Large application. Many college and universities will also accept alumni applicants for the on-campus competition.

  • With a little effort, finding a host affiliation is absolutely possible.

Fulbright applicants without a research affiliation in their chosen country can be creative about finding one.   My undergrad professors and I did not have any academic contacts with law professors in Madrid, so I went through the faculty sites of every major university in Madrid and emailed a copy of my preliminary proposal to professors specializing in immigration law.  I received a response from my future advisor, Diego, within 24 hours.  While this specific approach won’t work everywhere, it is one of many possibilities for making contacts abroad.

Photo: Cris Ramón, 2008-2009, Spain (top row, right) with six fellow Fulbrighters who collaborated on the From Emigration to Immigration: Seven American Perspectives on Immigration in Spain conference: (Top row, left to right) Jesse Feinberg, Marisa Diaz, Oscar Perez de La Fuente (Professor of Philosophy at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid), Alexandra Hinojosa; (Bottom row, left to right) Nicole Nfonoyim, Peter Holderness, and Michelle Dezember.

Questions for Cris about his Fulbright experiences?  Feel free to email him at CRamon.AlumniAmbassador@fulbrightmail.org.

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U.S. Fulbright

The Dutch Method for Improving Army Aeromedical Operations: Highlights from a Fulbright Fellow in Engineering, By Nathaniel Bastian, 2008-2009, The Netherlands

April 7, 2011

Fulbright Fellow to MEDEVAC Pilot; Nathaniel D. Bastian, 2008-2009, The Netherlands

After graduating from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, I headed to the Netherlands in August 2008 to begin my Fulbright grant pursuing a master’s degree in econometrics and operations research at Maastricht University. As a Fulbright Fellow, I researched and developed a model to help Army medical planners optimize aeromedical evacuation helicopter positioning and improve air ambulance systems.

I will never forget my first course. We started with chapter thirty-four of a textbook in which I hadn’t learned the material from the first thirty-three chapters. This introduction to the Dutch education system proved to be quite humbling. Nonetheless, my interaction with Dutch students and professors greatly enriched my experience because they were intelligent and hard-working team players. Maastricht University uses an innovative, unique teaching approach known as Problem-Based Learning, where students work and learn in small tutorial groups as opposed to lecture halls. By closely interacting with both Dutch and international students, I learned how to exchange knowledge and information effectively, analyze complex problems, collect pertinent data, and formulate and present collective solutions. This exposure to the Dutch learning method challenged me to be personally responsible for my education and created an environment that allowed me to become a more effective researcher.

Aside from working with Dutch students and professors, I immersed myself in Dutch culture by participating in events such as Carnival (a week-long festival in Maastricht involving locals wearing costumes, singing and dancing in the streets to live music) and Koninginnesdag (a day of national unity in Amsterdam where people wear the color orange and celebrate the Queen of the Netherlands’ birthday). Besides these fun cultural events, my travels to places such as historical battle sites in Nijmegen, tulip gardens at Keukenhof, stinky cheese factories in Gouda and museums in Amsterdam truly helped me to develop a profound understanding of Dutch culture.

Not only did these experiences change my perceptions of Dutch culture, but I believe my interactions with the Dutch whom I worked with and met changed their perceptions of Americans. As my Fulbright Program took place during our riveting 2008 presidential election and the global economic recession, I had many intriguing conversations and debates with the Dutch about American foreign policy, economics and health care. Additionally, I made lasting impressions as a soldier, officer and aviator in the U.S. Army because I shared my various experiences in the military.

From my experiences as a Fulbright Fellow, here is some advice for future applicants:

  • Formulate a research proposal on a topic about which you are most passionate. Incorporate how your findings will make a difference stateside and abroad.
  • Select reference writers who truly know your personality, intellectual aptitude and leadership ability.
  • In your personal statement, share your life story and how it relates to your proposed research.
  • Seek guidance from mentors, and be prepared to work through many essay revisions.

Trying Dutch clogs on for size; Nathaniel D. Bastian, 2008-2009, The Netherlands

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U.S. Fulbright

All the Way to Timbuktu, By Casey Scieszka, 2007-2008, Mali

March 31, 2011

Casey Scieszka, 2007-2008, Mali, with neighborhood friends in Bamako

The first word I learned in the Malian language Bambara was toubab. I must have heard it a hundred times a day, called out to me by children playing with sticks in the street, store-owners having tea on the corner, women pounding millet with babies tied to their backs.

Roughly, it means “whitey.”

There was no way I, the American hodgepodge of northern European ancestors, was ever going to blend in over in West Africa. Not even once I started wearing the local clothes or speaking the language or eating with my hands.

Slowly but surely though, each of the three times I settled into a new neighborhood (in Bamako then Timbuktu then Segou), I heard the word less and less. As I learned all of my neighbors’ names, they started learning mine. Exchanging greetings and names turned into exchanging bits of news, which turned into hanging out under mango trees during 120 degree afternoons, which eventually turned into friendship.

That is where the Fulbright Program does its best work.

Beyond this interpersonal connection, I enjoyed my formal research. I looked at the role of Islam in the education system, which meant that I spent my days doing observations in different kinds of classrooms, interviewing teachers and principals, having conversations with parents and students. I learned a lot about the politics of language, about the perceived differences in moral versus academic education, about finger-pointing and about the effects of decentralization. But all of that academic research would have been missing its real pulse if the Fulbright Program hadn’t allowed for the time and freedom to become a part of the community as well. Issues that I came across in my research became crystallized in the more personal experiences of my new friends and neighbors. Sure, I knew that most Malian girls don’t make it past 6th grade; but that figure meant so much more to me once my neighbors started talking about whether or not it was worth the money to send their twelve-year-old daughter Saran to school anymore.

It’s hard to remember what I even thought of Mali before I lived there. I knew it was hot, had produced some amazing musicians like Ali Farka Touré, and was home to the ever mysterious Timbuktu. Now though, for me, Mali is made up of familiar faces; faces with names, homes, families, favorite foods, favorite songs, jokes, grievances, desires. Mali is now the people that I met.

Hopefully, the vision of America now has one more face to the Malians I met—mine. Americans are too often generalized as loud and uncaring, greedy, rich, and unskilled in foreign language. I did my best to be my best: to listen, to learn, to give in the ways that I could.

The formal results of my experience were my Fulbright report (which helped members of USAID decide to fund specific foreign language programs in private religious schools they were previously very wary of), the nonprofit I went on to co-found (Local Language Literacy, which is dedicated to creating, printing and distributing books in local languages like Bambara to students free of charge), and the illustrated book To Timbuktu about my two years living in Asia and West Africa that came out at the beginning of this March.

To Timbuktu was a fantastic way to take my Fulbright experience and get it into the hands of a wider audience, to put Mali on the map for more Americans, and to stay in touch with the places and people that had become so dear to me.

My boyfriend and I just went back to Mali this past January—exactly three years since we left at the end of my Fulbright. And sure, when we got out of the taxi, we were bombarded by cries of “Eh Toubab!” But the closer we got to our old home, the more we started hearing calls of “Fatimata! Salif!” And those aren’t other words for “whitey.”  They’re our Malian names.

For more information about the nonprofit Local Language Literacy, please visit locallanguageliteracy.org.

For more information about Casey’s book, please visit allthewaytotimbuktu.com.

 

  • Keep repeating to yourself: “Feasibility! Feasibility!” Don’t set yourself up to do some kind of country-wide survey all alone. Be realistic about what one person can look into, how long it will take you, and what you yourself are especially qualified to do/will enjoy doing.

 

  • Look into as many potential affiliates as possible. It’s often really hard to track people down from abroad. Some of these people you contact may not wind up being your official affiliate but could be wonderful people to meet up with once you’re in the country, nonetheless.

 

  • Leave some room for your research to change. That’s one of the best parts of doing a project like this: you have a plan; you do some work and meet some people, learn something new, and wind up going in a direction you might not have anticipated.

 

  • Contact every friend-of-a-friend in that country you possibly can. They might be able to tell you things your r esearch from home can’t, they might have friends who can be your affiliates, and they might even offer to host you when you first arrive! Having a tiny bit in common can go a surprisingly long way when you’re far from home.
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