Italy Archives - Fulbright Student Program Blog

U.S. Classrooms Celebrate International Education Week with Fulbrighters

November 13, 2018

In celebration of International Education Week 2018, six Fulbright Foreign Students, Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistants, and Fulbright Visiting Scholars will visit elementary, middle, and high schools in Kentucky, Nebraska, and New York. The visits will take place from November 13 to November 16, and are sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), in partnership with Reach the World.

The Fulbrighters will share the culture of their home countries with the students and describe their Fulbright experiences. The visits will allow American students to increase their global understanding by meeting a foreign Fulbrighter. With a diverse group of participants and classrooms, these visits will help increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and people of other countries. The visits will build on another partnership between ECA and Reach the World, in which these same classrooms are holding virtual exchanges with U.S. exchange students who are studying overseas through Fulbright and other ECA exchange programs.

Follow along with the U.S. classrooms this week and meet a Fulbrighter, by tracking and using #Fulbright on social media.

Meet the Fulbright participants:

Pritesh Chakraborty
Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant from India
New York University

Hi, I’m Pritesh. I’m an assistant professor and research scholar at West Bengal State University in India. I’m a Foreign Language Teaching Assistant with Fulbright, but my area of interest is comic book studies. I love comic books because I love stories and I’m interested in the rich heritage of English literature. Right now, I teach Hindi to elementary level language learners as part of my Fulbright award, and I’ll begin teaching intermediate levels next semester.

Lei Chen
Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant from China
University of Nebraska – Lincoln

Hi, I’m Lei! I’m from China and I’m a lecturer. I received my B.A. and M.A. degrees in English Language and Literature from Liaoning University, China. I’ve been teaching at Liaoning University of Traditional Chinese Medicine for 8 years after getting my Master’s degree. Currently, I’m a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, teaching Chinese 101 and 201, and sharing Chinese culture with my students.

Abeer Khlaifat
Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant from Jordan
University of Kentucky

Hello, I’m Abeer Khlaifat from Jordan, and I grew up in the capital city, Amman. Arabic is my passion, and I decided that I would study it at the age of 12. I have both a B.A. and M.A. in Arabic and I’ve worked as a teacher for Americans and other international students who are studying abroad in Jordan. This was part of my motivation to come to the U.S., where I’m currently a Foreign Language Teaching Assistant at the University of Kentucky.

Anna Potapova
Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant from Russia
University of Nebraska – Lincoln

Hello, I’m Anna! I have a lot of experience teaching English to adults and I also received my CELTA (Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) certification from St. Giles College, Brighton, UK. I have a degree in Romance and Germanic philology from Ivanovo State University. I have a number of other certificates and qualifications, but my main professional interests are methods of teaching English and Russian as a foreign language, the lexical approach, and using authentic speaking as a speaking model. I’m currently teaching Russian 101 to college students at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln and organize cultural events to promote Russian culture in America. I also have a fluffy cat, who is extremely cuddly.

Francesca Scafuto
Fulbright Visiting Scholar from Italy
Ramapo College of New Jersey

Hello! I’m Dr. Francesca Scafuto and I’m a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Ramapo College of New Jersey. I’m from Italy, and I’m an experienced Adolescent and Young Adult Psychotherapist. I’m interested in how people think as a community about the environment, and I’m studying social science and environmental health during my Fulbright. I’m also an artist and I like to paint in my free time.

Nina Siegfried
Fulbright Foreign Student from Germany
University of Louisville

I’m from Germany and I’m currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Sports Administration at the University of Louisville. I grew up a competitive athlete and decided to pursue sports management at an early age. I participated in an exchange year in high school and lived with a host family while attending Apollo High School in Owensboro, KY. I studied for my undergraduate degree in the Netherlands and received a B.A. in International Studies and Management from Arnhem Business School. I also studied abroad in Hong Kong to receive a minor in Marketing.

1 Comment

U.S. Fulbright

Detecting Gravitational Waves at Home and Abroad

October 4, 2017

Daniel Hoak, 2015-2016, Italy, visiting Florence

Fulbrighters achieve remarkable things! Are you following the announcements for this year’s Nobel Prize winners? So far, two Fulbright alumni to France have become 2017 Nobel Laureates, Fulbright U.S. Student alumnus Michael Rosbash and Fulbright U.S. Scholar alumnus Kip S. Thorne, for Physiology or Medicine and Physics, respectively.

Today, we are re-posting an article written in 2016 by Fulbright U.S. Student alumnus to Italy, Daniel Hoak, as he was part of the team of scientists who worked on the the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves – the very project that contributed to Kip S. Thorne becoming one of this year’s Nobel Prize winners for Physics!

The Fulbright Program congratulates Kip S. Thorne and Daniel Hoak for their outstanding and ongoing work in the field of Physics.

Two months ago, physicists around the world were set ‘chirping’ with the announcement that gravitational waves had been detected for the first time. The detection is the culmination of decades of work, and it represents the beginning of a new era in astronomy.

0 Comments

U.S. Fulbright

Fulbright to Friendship: Connecting the Past to the Present with the Refugee Community in Trieste, Italy

March 2, 2017

Umberto Speranza, 2016-2017, Italy, enjoys the view of the Gulf of Trieste from the Castle of Miramare

Arriving in Italy nearly five months ago, I felt confident and proud to be returning to the country, and region – Friuli Venezia Giulia – where my grandparents emigrated from just 60 years ago. When Umberto and Maria Stolfo said goodbye to Friuli to start a new life in the United States, the Fulbright Program was just 10 years old. I’m certain that the last thing on their mind was the possibility that one day their grandson would return to Italy while serving as a cultural ambassador between their native land and their adopted home. On second thought, perhaps that is exactly what they were thinking.

In a year in which the Fulbright Program celebrated its 70th anniversary, I began my Fulbright journey to Trieste, Italy – the capital city of the region in which my grandparents were born and raised. I am here to assess how political situations impact refugee policy-making at the local level and to highlight the human consequences that ensue. Without a doubt, the journey they made as Italian immigrants to America ultimately paved the way for me to have this Fulbright experience. I am able to use this good fortune to work every day with people arriving from across the world with the hope that Italy might just be the adopted home that will allow them to create a future so bright that their children and grandchildren might never know the suffering that stems from war, terror and oppression.

3 Comments

U.S. Fulbright

Walking in the Shoes of a Deaf Italian: A Deaf American in Italy

December 14, 2016

Sheila Xu, 2016-2017, Italy, attending her first visit at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a Fulbright event

Italy is one of the top vacation destinations in the world. The whole country is an outdoor museum, steeped in ancient history and customs. The food and weather are world-renowned. Even spoken Italian has a musical rhythm to it. One would think moving to Italy would be la dolce vita, or “living the sweet life”.

However, living in Italy on a Fulbright grant as a deaf person (Cochlear Implant user with both oral and sign language skills) certainly has its own trials and tribulations. I came to discover that the experiences and perspectives of a typical deaf Italian and American are very different. One notable difference is our languages. In the United States, American Sign Language (ASL) is the language of deaf Americans. But almost nobody in Italy knew ASL! So, it was time for me to learn Italian Sign Language, or Lingua dei Segni Italiana (LIS), so I could communicate with deaf Italians. In fact, I am proud to say I am now able to give a presentation in LIS to an audience of LIS signers when giving seminars about the American Deaf culture and its people.

1 Comment

U.S. Fulbright

From Two to Infinity: What the Second Detection of Gravitational Waves Tells Us About the Future

July 20, 2016

Daniel Hoak, 2015-2016, Italy, visiting Florence

Last month, scientists in the LIGO and Virgo scientific collaborations announced the second direct detection of gravitational waves, from the orbit and merger of a pair of black holes. The event, named GW151226, arrived in the early morning on the day after Christmas, and has been nicknamed the “Boxing Day event” by the collaborations. With a second event in hand, gravitational wave science has moved beyond the era of sensational first detection, and is evolving into a reliable tool for astronomy and physics.

I recently finished my Fulbright year working at the Virgo gravitational wave observatory outside of Pisa, Italy. The last time Virgo listened for gravitational wave was in 2011, and since then, the instrument has been off-line for a complete upgrade.

At Virgo, I’m part of the team of scientists who are putting the final touches on the upgrade. To borrow a phrase from James Merrill, our job is to make wholeness out of hodgepodge: we’re creating a functional detector from the precision equipment that has been designed and built over the last five years. We plan to have the detector on-line this winter, in time to join the two LIGO observatories in the United States as they listen for gravitational waves.

0 Comments

U.S. Fulbright

Detecting Gravitational Waves at Home and Abroad

April 26, 2016

Daniel Hoak, 2015-2016, Italy

I’ve been a member of the team that made the detection since 2005, when I joined the staff of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in Livingston, Louisiana. Later, I went to grad school at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where I earned my Ph.D. last fall. My doctoral research focused on data analysis with gravitational wave detectors, and I assisted with upgrades to the LIGO facility in Hanford, Washington that made the detection possible.

For my Fulbright research, I’m helping to upgrade the Virgo detector, an experiment located outside of Pisa, Italy. Using a third detector to listen for gravitational waves will improve the science tremendously: we’ll be able to detect weaker signals, across more of the sky, and work out their position and properties with greater accuracy.

1 Comment

Older Posts