Aaron Schaffer, Photo Editor
This year, UR has a record number of applicants who were awarded Fulbright US Student Grants: 11 in total thus far, with three more still awaiting their results.
Winners include seniors Rohini Bhatia, Gabrielle Cornish, Meredith Doubleday, Madeleine Klinger, Cameron LaPoint, Ankit Medhekar, Veronica Price, Jyothi Purushotham, and Anja Weinrid, as well as Eastman senior Shannon Carpio and Andrew Otis ’11.
In addition, a faculty member at the Warner School of Education, Mary Jane Curry, has been selected as a Fulbright Scholar Recipient to lecture and research in Chile next spring.
According to Student Fellowships Director Belinda Redden, a total of 31 student applications for the Fulbright Student Grant were endorsed by the University, from which 16 were selected as national finalists.
“Two finalists for Turkey are still awaiting their results and one for Bangladesh,” Redden said.
Student grant recipients will travel to countries throughout the world, including Russia, India, the UK, Japan, Spain, Germany, and Thailand to participate in either individual projects or English Teaching assistantships (ETA).
“The role of the ETA is to help students improve their communication skills in English” Redden said. “Another role of the ETA is to help students better understand US history, culture, and society.”
Other UR students were selected for the Fulbright scholarship known as the “Full Grant.” These students are selected based on the strength of their proposal and have more freedom in their content. Students may choose to conduct a specific research project, participate in a masters program, or perhaps a combination of the two, Redden explained. The main requirement is this proposal must be academically driven.
“Applicants must articulate how they see the Fulbright year helping them to get to the next stage of their academic pursuits,” Redden said.
One such “Full Grant” winner is Otis. Otis currently lives in Sri Lanka but will be traveling to Kolkata, India to research the country’s early press and the Bengal Renaissance.
Otis first applied for the Fulbright ETA scholarship his senior year at UR but did not receive the award. He decided to apply again, this time as a “Full Grant” scholar.
Otis will spend nine months in India beginning in August. He will be working on his research project in addition to working with an organization called Calcutta Walks, which offers historical sightseeing walks through the city.
“I never knew that I would get a Fulbright,” Otis said. “Now I have an academic project with institutional support. I am thrilled to reenter academia and am truly grateful.”
Professor Mary Jane Curry of the Warner School of Education will also be conducting research on a Fulbright Scholarship in addition to lecturing at the Universidad Mayor in Santiago.
She will travel to Chile and research how academics and scholars are pressured to publish works in English.
“I think it will give me a good perspective on how students in other countries are thinking about US higher educations,” Curry said. “I’ll mostly be coming back with data that needs to be analyzed and written about.”
Cozen is a member of the class of 2015.
