Browsing Category

U.S. Fulbright

U.S. Fulbright

My Time with the Bleeding-Heart Baboons: An Ethiopian Fulbright Experience, By David Joseph Pappano, 2010-2011, Ethiopia

July 5, 2011

Most people have the same image of all primates. This generic ape or monkey swings through the trees, eats bananas and lives in a small social group of about 20-30 individuals. Few people imagine monkeys that sleep on sheer cliffs. Even fewer folks think a primate could eat grass. And only a handful of people have ever observed over 1,000 wild primates living together in a single social group. Through my Fulbright grant, I had the fortune of spending time with a peculiar primate species that exhibits all three of these behaviors. During a 10-month stay in Ethiopia, I studied the behavior of geladas (Theropithecus gelada).

Geladas are known by their nickname, the “bleeding heart baboon.” Geladas are not, however, true baboons. While baboons eat meat, fruit, and nuts, geladas are the only primate species to feed nearly entirely on grass (over 90% of their diet). Their “bleeding heart baboon” nickname comes from the unique bare patch of skin located on the chest and neck of both male and female geladas. In females, this patch changes color from light pink to deep red with beaded vesicles and is thought to be a visual indicator of estrous. The male chest patch is likely a sexually selected signal, as chest color varies across males and is associated with dominance status.

My Fulbright grant allowed me to conduct dissertation research on the social and hormonal factors that influence bachelor geladas’ behavior living in all-male groups. In these groups, males may form bonds with other males that may persist through adult life. Young bachelors are often smaller than dominant leader males and may cooperate to overthrow leaders in order to mate with females. My research examines the nature of these relationships, particularly if young males are more likely to cooperate with their buddies when fighting leader males. Additionally, I collected feces to understand stress hormone level variation among bachelor males. These data will allow me to understand the relationship between stress and social bonding among male geladas, and is important for an understanding of how human friendships evolved.

While geladas may have been the primate of interest for my thesis, they were not the only primates involved in my Fulbright experience. I worked closely with many humans as well during my time in Ethiopia. Since I worked at Simien Mountains National Park (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), I lived with the park scouts and their families. I worked with a field assistant, Esheti Jejaw, and trained him in various scientific methods. In turn, he taught me how to speak Amharic, make injera (traditional Ethiopian bread), and navigate the cliffs of the Simien Mountains. Finally, my relationship with the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa allowed me to speak to high school students about my research and conserving Ethiopian biodiversity. I hope that at least one of these students pursues a future in wildlife biology, but I’ll settle for eco-minded doctors, lawyers, and future leaders of Ethiopia.

  • If you are interested in applying for a Fulbright study/research grant, I recommend you always be mindful of the Fulbright Program’s mission to promote mutual understanding between the U.S. and the people of other countries. Find creative ways to incorporate this into your research plan, even if you study plants, birds, or primates. You should be foremost an intellectual ambassador, and secondarily, a researcher.
  • If you are currently at a university, seek out faculty members that have had Fulbright experiences. Get to know them and ask them for reference letters. Do not think, however, that having a recommendation from a Fulbright alumnus guarantees a grant. It is far more important to have recommenders that know you both personally and academically.
  • Finally, your research proposal should be something that can be accomplished within an academic year. Think of it as the first step to a larger project that incorporates the Fulbright Program’s goals. You cannot cure diseases or save entire ecosystems in less than a year, but you can make significant progress and impact lives that will last well beyond your grant tenure.

Top photo: David Joseph Pappano, 2010-2011, Ethiopia (left), with his field assistant, Esheti Jejaw

David Joseph Pappano, 2010-2011, Ethiopia, speaking to high school students about his Fulbright research at the “Yes Youth Can!” conference held at the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa on April 30, 2011

A male gelada looks out over the Simien Mountains, Ethiopia

0 Comments
U.S. Fulbright

Fulbright Italian Style: Classroom, Community, and Culture, By Jessica Orton, 2010-2011, Fulbright English Teaching Assistant to Italy

June 28, 2011

During my Fulbright grant, I worked as an English Teaching Assistant (ETA) in three different schools: one in Rome and two in L’Aquila.  In each school, I played a slightly different assistant teaching role and covered a range of topics.  When conducting lessons on everything from American culture, to literary analysis, to practical English phrases and grammar, I had to constantly adapt as an assistant teacher.  The students viewed me as a cultural ambassador, which led to cultural exchanges on a daily basis.  Often, lesson plans became secondary to discussing current events such as the war in Libya or the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden, where we could exchange Italian and American perspectives.

The most important aspect of my success as an ETA was in building relationships with students.  I created an encouraging classroom environment and as students became more comfortable and confident, I would often hear from teachers, “Wow, this student usually never speaks.”  My rapport with each class allowed students to take chances and let go of their inhibitions when speaking English or explaining their points of view.

My relationship with students also extended outside of the classroom.  In every school, I had the opportunity to organize community events for my students, such as walking together in the Race for the Cure and participating in a class trip from Rome to L’Aquila.  This last activity, where I took one of my classes from Rome to see and learn about L’Aquila’s current condition, was particularly important for my students.  The grim situation of L’Aquila’s city and people after the 2009 earthquake is not widely known in Italy, and my Roman students were legitimately shocked to see the city’s current state.  These opportunities to engage with my students in an informal setting fostered not only personal relationships, but also enhanced their self-confidence in public speaking.

While I had an amazing, positive experience in Italy, I still had to cope with early morning commutes to L’Aquila from Rome, organizational and bureaucratic issues, and the struggle to keep students motivated in class.  Yet, I also learned from these challenges and improved my ability to handle conflicts. Professionally and personally, I became more adaptable, creative, and more confident as a leader.  I learned new things every day: discussing topics with my students, attending cultural events in Rome, and simply chatting with Italian friends over coffee.  I want to offer my sincere appreciation to the Fulbright Program for truly building bridges between cultures.

To future Fulbright grantees, I would say believe consistently in your abilities, embrace new experiences, and don’t be afraid to take risks.  Be ready to adapt to new situations and challenges.  It’s amazing how often obstacles turn into opportunities.

0 Comments
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

0 Comments
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

0 Comments
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.

0 Comments