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BY ROSARIO PAZ

In print | May 1, 2008

The Fulbright Program is currently in the process of releasing the list of its chosen grantees for the 2008-2009 period. Among this year’s recipients of the prestigious research fellowships are six graduating seniors and two alumni of the college.

At the time of publication, several Swarthmore students who applied for grants had yet to receive notification from the Fulbright Program, which issues final decisions on candidates over a period of time beginning in March and ending in early June.

The chosen grantees for the 2008-2009 Fulbright Program include Elena Chopyak ’08, Christian DeSimone ’06, Jonathan Edwards ’06, Scott Fortmann-Roe ’08, Susannah Gund ’08, Yusha Hu ’08, Natalie Bowlus ’08, Omar Ramadan ’08 and Ronni Sadovsky ’08.

According to Fellowships and Prizes Advisor Melissa Mandos, the Fulbright Program offers students the opportunity to advance their studies of a particular interest in a host country the year after they graduate from their home institution.

The Fulbright Program requires that applicants be nominated by their respective institutions through an internal application process. At Swarthmore, the Fellowships and Prizes Office works extensively with its nominees before they submit their applications to compete at the national level. Students are constructively advised on the application process, as well as given a rating that will be sent to the Fulbright office in New York.

Typically, most students will choose to partake in a project of their own design, a teaching assistantship or in a study abroad graduate program at a university. Students who are working on an independent study will usually work in affiliation with an academic institution, an NGO, or other types of organizations.

“It’s exciting because [the Fulbright Program] is taking a topic that [the students] are really interested in that they’ve either studied here at Swarthmore or that they plan to pursue,” Mandos said.

The program serves not only to provide students with the opportunity to engage in a particular academic or social interest, but also acts as an exchange program for students to act as ambassadors of their respective countries.

In other words, although students do not serve as official ambassadors, the Fulbright program hopes that the experiences that their opportunities provide will allow students to build good relations with their host country, as well as returning to their home countries with a newfound understanding that they can share with others as they further the research in their interest.

“It’s viewed as a very positive experience in terms of that cultural exchange aspect,” Mandos said.

This year there were 43 applicants for the Fulbright Program from the college. The national screening committees recommended 23 of the applicants for further consideration to the respective host countries. The number of applications was at an all-time high, according to Mandos, as the yearly average is around two dozen applications.

Chopyak, a major in Sociology and Anthropology, will conduct her research on family planning promotions in Tunisia and observing how certain Islamic interpretations either support or oppose these promotions. More specifically, she plans on evaluating the various social marketing strategies used to promote contraceptive and disease preventing devices by visiting several family planning clinics, as well as community interventions and women’s empowerment groups.

Fortmann-Roe, a double major in Engineering and Economics, will be returning to Poland where he studied abroad sophomore year in order to work on treating excess fluoride in groundwater, a surfeit of which can begin to cause problems such as bone structure deformations. He also plans to study photography during his stay.

Gund, a special major in Languages and Linguistics and an Educational Studies minor, will be continuing the work she began during the summer of 2007 as part of her thesis on language attitudes.

At the time, she interviewed several women about language usage in Morocco. On the Fulbright, she plans to research language usage more in-depth within secondary schools.

According to Gund, the official language of Morocco is Arabic, but there are different forms that are used – one form for written use, and a Moroccan spoken dialect, of which there are different variations within the country.

“I want to see how the written version and the spoken version interact in the classroom,” she said. “I’m really excited to go back and to use the language skills that I’ve learned but also to build on the experience that I had in trying to learn the culture and trying to learn different Moroccan customs and traditions.”

Hu, a Biology major and Environmental Studies minor, will be working with the director of the Institute for Environmental Management and Policy at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, in examining the country’s water resource management. Furthermore, her research will address how political, social and economic processes affect China’s environmental policy.

Ramadan, a double major in Sociology and Anthropology and Religion, will be visiting several places in Egypt in order to study the continued use of camels despite the introduction of the wheel and how it represents a connection between traditional and modern culture.

“My father would tell me they can run faster than a motorcycle and can live in the deserts,” he said. “I just built an interest, especially when I went abroad to Egypt, I sort of realized that there are a lot of stereotypes about the camel … Some people are surprised that they didn’t see them on the streets.”

Half-Egyptian himself, Ramadan will be visiting five places in Egypt in order to observe the different uses of the camels, including Giza and Aswan, where the camel mostly serves as a tourist attraction; the Western Desert, where Bedouin tribes, known for their use of the camels for sustenance, reside, and Sinai, where 12 to 15 Bedouin tribes participate in a famous camel race.

Sadovsky, a double major in Philosophy and Linguistics, will spend her year after graduation at the Hebrew University’s Center for the Study of Rationality in Jerusalem.

She plans to study a subfield of philosophy known as moral psychology, which addresses philosophical problems concerning how the perception and fulfillment of moral obligations are aided by one’s thoughts, emotions and desires.

Alumnus DeSimone will be going to Germany. His work is entitled “Privacy in Translation: Technology, Surveillance and German Domestic Security Policy.” Alumnus Edwards will be going to Nepal. His work is entitled “Traditional Foodways and Urban Sustainability in Newar Bhaktapur.”

“I would say literally you can never start thinking about a Fulbright too early,” Mandos said. “I would say the key is the summer, the summer between your junior and senior year to be working very methodically on your Fulbright application.”

“One of the nice things we have in this office are sample Fulbright essays and Watson essays and other grants as well,” she said. “If people want to come in and just take a look at that and get a sense for what goes into a successful application.”

Applications for the Fulbright Program are due on September 15th. Alternates for the Fulbright Program hear about their status in the summer.

Disclosure Note: Elena Chopyak is assistant chief copy editor for The Phoenix, but had no role in the production of this article.

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