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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Friday, March 29, 2024

Eleven Tufts students receive Fulbright grants for 2017–2018 academic year

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Ballou Hall is pictured on May 5, 2016.

Disclaimer: Abigail Feldman is a former Managing Editor and Executive News Editor at the Daily. She was not involved in the writing or editing of this article.

Eleven Tufts alumni were awarded grants through the Fulbright Program, an international exchange program for college graduates and alumni sponsored by the U.S. government for the 2017–2018 academic year. This makes Tufts a top producer of Fulbright grantees among research institutions nationwide, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Anne Moore, program specialist in the Office of Scholar Development, stated that this is the second consecutive year that Tufts has been recognized as a top producer of Fulbright students. The recipients of the Fulbright grant were chosen from a pool of 52 Tufts applicants, 30 of whom moved on to become semi-finalists, according to Moore.

For the 2018–2019 school year, the current application cycle, there are 22 finalists out of a pool of 45 Tufts applicants, according to Moore. These finalists will find out if they are Fulbright recipients at staggered dates in the coming weeks, Moore said.

According to the Fulbright website, the program offers exchanges in more than 140 countries to college graduates and graduate students. Moore stated that the program consists of both English Teaching Assistant grants and research grants, both of which are offered almost anywhere in the world. Tufts students have gone to India, Indonesia, Mexico and China.

As the point-person who works with students to help them determine which programs and scholarships fit their interests, Moore highlighted the support system available to Tufts students in the midst of the Fulbright application process.

“The bulk of my one-on-one work with students over the summer is about Fulbright applications,” Moore said in a phone interview with the Daily. She added that the application process is “rigorous,” and includes, among other things, a one-page personal statement and a two-page research proposal (specifically for research grant applicants).

“It’s just really challenging to find a way to ... sell yourself without either underselling your abilities or coming across as arrogant,” Moore said.“[My goal is to help] students really use the application process as an opportunity to hone [in on] an articulation of what matters the most to them about their research, what draws them to their research [or] why they want to teach.”

Both current and past Fulbright grantees from Tufts spoke to Moore's central role in the application process, both in guiding students to applying in the first place andin  helping them with the process itself.

“[Moore] seems to be the beacon on all things Fulbright,” Alison Awtrey Graham (LA '16), an english teaching assistant in France, said. Graham added that Moore was “a force in … keeping us all reassured.”

Nathaniel Tran (LA '17), a current Fulbright research grantee in Argentina, added in an email to the Daily that Moore was crucial “in helping me and other applicants shape our separate research and personal statements to be cohesive and build off one another.”

Abigail Feldman (LA '16), who also received her grant in 2016 and currently works as a program assistant for the philosophy department at Tufts, shared Tran's appreciation of Moore's guidance in the process.

Tufts has a really great support system … I don’t think I would have gotten my grant without [Moore],” Feldman said.

Fulbright grant recipients Feldman, Graham and Sara Gardner (LA '16) attributed their success getting into the program to Tufts’ support system for its applicants. Many also added that Tufts’ student body inspired them to apply.

Feldman said Tufts' diverse student body also leads to a high acceptance rate.

“There are just so many really interesting people at Tufts, so it’s not surprising to me that a lot of people would get chosen for a grant,” Feldman said.

Moore also pointed to Tufts’ international focus as a potential reason for its status as a top producer of Fulbright recipients.

“[Tufts has] a really strong international orientation, so a lot of students are looking to work for … the foreign service or the state department or [are] looking to work with immigrant populations in the U.S.,” she said, adding that Tufts’ intensive language requirement as well as its emphasis on study abroad contributes to students' candidacy for Fulbright grants.

Though Tran acknowledged that Moore and Tufts students play an important role in making Tufts a top producer of Fulbright grantees, he also told the Daily that Tufts’ status as an elite institution with a predominantly white student population could contribute to its position as a top producer.

“It would be disingenuous of me to ignore the fact that a disproportionate amount of Fulbrighters come from elite, private, predominantly white institutions,” he said. "[This] raises questions of representation and distribution of resources.”

Moore also stated that Fulbright research grants often build off of a recent graduate’s senior or master’s thesis.

Gardner, who was awarded a research grant to Madrid, Spain in 2016, said she had the opportunity to expand her Tufts research into Sephardic Jewish cuisine after 1492 during her Fulbright grant.

“I wanted to get the other half of what happened before [1492] that influenced how the food would change in the diaspora [of Sephardic Jews from Spain],” Gardner said in a phone interview with the Daily.

Gardner, who now works as the associate director of Young Adult Programs at the Hebrew College in Newton, Mass., added that her research during Fulbright has affected her life after the grant. "[My experience through Fulbright allowed me to better understand] the diversity of Jewish communal life," she said.

Ashley Wilcox applied to the Fulbright program through the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, but worked with Moore  while completing her graduate degree in the English department at Tufts.

Wilcox spoke about the importance of the support system she received at Tufts.

"Throughout the grant, we send in various reports and meet with our host country advisors to discuss our progress and any roadblocks we may encounter," she said. "That said, the work itself is very independent and requires a lot of self-motivation."

Like GardnerWilcox's research in Germany through the grant relates to her academic work. Wilcox is researching Walter Benjamin, a German-Jewish scholar who wrote about the violence he lived through and observed during the World War II era, in the Walter Benjamin Archive. She is focusing on his views on the violence of the World War II era.

Although Wilcox said she wishes to focus on the works in the Walter Benjamin Archive for her Fulbright grant, she added that her research will be a valuable tool for her studies beyond the grant period.

Benjamin’s theory is integral to my dissertation, so the grant will also inform my doctoral work,” Wilcox wrote in an email to the Daily.

Janna Karatas (LA '16), who is currently an English Teaching Assistant in Spain, saw the program as an opportunity to study abroad and explore career paths.

“I became more interested in education during my time at Tufts, and, not having had the opportunity to study abroad, the combination of teaching and facilitating exchange and mutual understanding in another country appealed to me,” she wrote in an email to the Daily.

Garon Lizana (LA '17), a current grantee researching topics on anthropology and sociology in China, reflected Karatas’ sentiment.

“I saw Fulbright as a great way to achieve a lot of personal goals all at once. I wanted to get more experience conducting research, improve my Chinese and get more experience living overseas,” Lizana wrote in an e-mail to the Daily. “I felt achieving these goals would help advance and clarify my future career path.”

Feldman, however, emphasized that the program can be beneficial even without direct relation to academic work or a current career path.