Newswise — In February of this year, Boise State University was named among the top U.S. universities in producing student and faculty Fulbright Scholars in the country’s premier international educational exchange program, the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs announced. The list was topped by University of California at Berkeley with 10 and Harvard with nine. Boise State appeared along with Seattle University, the College of Charleston and just four other universities in its classification.
For 2015-16, these four students were named finalists and all four received an award:
Adiya Jaffari will graduate from Boise State on May 9 with a degree in health sciences. She was awarded a public health research grant to India for her proposal, “Maternal Mortality Ratio in India: Midwifery Practices and Quality Accessible Healthcare.”
Over half of the births in India still take place outside of a hospital setting, with the help of midwives, for a variety of cultural and practical reasons. In addition, nearly one-fifth of the world’s maternal deaths happen in India.
“It is likely that there are not as many skilled practitioners as there are those in need,” Jaffari said in her grant proposal. “Therefore, I would like to explore the methods of practice and skill sets of midwives and how these impact maternal mortality ratio. I hope to understand where and why maternal deaths are taking place in India and if quality maternal healthcare can be accessed outside of a hospital, with a well-trained midwife.”
After the experience, Jaffari intends to attend medical school and become a physician. Her ultimate goal is to have her own medical practice in an underserved region.
Christopher Bower will graduate May 9 with a double degree in social work and political science and has been awarded an English Teaching Assistant grant to Tajikistan, a mountainous landlocked country north of Afghanistan.
While learning about the area, Bower says he fell in love with the Persian culture and wants to use his social work background to help youth in the country impacted by the drug trade.
“My main drive and vision is to establish a youth community coalition that offers healthy and educational alternatives to lives caught up in the drug trade, violence, and/or abject poverty,” he explained. “In essence, a group of adolescents will be given the resources necessary to actualize their natural talents and become a sustainable whole, perpetuating a happier and healthier society overall.”
Kathryn Huebschmann graduated in 2013 with a double degree in visual art and English, with an emphasis in technical communication. She was awarded an English Teaching Assistant grant to Norway.
“Writing centers were ultimately what drew me to Norway,” Huebschmann said. “I loved that they were included in the Norwegian ETA responsibilities, and I was ecstatic that Norway is embracing them to the point that they’ve created a National Writing Center. By studying Norwegian approaches to tutoring, I hope to gain new ideas for better serving ELL [English language learner] students here in the U.S.”
In addition to teaching English, Huebschmann hopes to continue working on a project she began at Boise State as a facilitator for the Writing Center’s Thursday English Afternoons (TEA Time).
“During TEA Time, consultants and ELL students came together to practice speaking skills through games and conversation,” she explained. “In Norway, I intend to incorporate both art and writing into these meetings by initiating a book arts project where participants will create books together, exploring how the language or medium used affects their content. I’m hoping the project will give NMBU’s international students, Norwegian students, and me space beyond the classroom to get to know each other and form a tighter community.”
Vanessa Rosenbaum graduated in 2014 with a degree in English and was awarded an English Teaching Assistant grant to Turkey.
Since its inception in 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided more than 360,000 participants with the opportunity to exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.
Annually, more than 1,100 U.S. college and university faculty and administrators, professionals, artists, journalists, scientists, lawyers and independent scholars are awarded Fulbright grants to teach and/or conduct research in more than 125 countries throughout the world.
Three Boise State faculty and one student were awarded Fulbright scholarships for 2014-15 to teach, research and study abroad. An additional student was named a finalist. For 2015-16, in addition to the four students two Boise State professors also were named Fulbright Scholars – Kerry Rice, for educational technology at Nicolas Copernicus University in Poland, and Jeffrey Wilhelm, for English at University of Saarlandes in Saarbruecken in Germany.
Fulbright scholarships are supported at Boise State by International Learning Opportunities (for faculty) and the Honors College (for students). The Fulbright Program is funded through an annual appropriation made by the United States Congress to the Department of State. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations, and foundations in foreign countries and in the United States also provide direct and indirect support.
RSS