Meet the Fabulous Fulbrights
This year’s bumper crop of USC Dornsife Fulbright recipients includes nine alumni, four doctoral students and one undergraduate. Their fellowships enable them to span the globe, taking them to Northern Ireland, Thailand, Belarus, Mexico, Korea, Colombia, Ivory Coast, Andorra, Armenia, Taiwan, and Japan to pursue research and gain valuable teaching experience in the countries of their choice.
USC has been recognized as being among the top 40 research institutions in the United States to cultivate Fulbright Student Grant recipients, according to the Fulbright Program, the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program.
Established in 1946 and sponsored by the United States Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the Fulbright is the largest international fellowship program in the U.S. The Fulbright Student Grant supports one year of independent study, research and teaching in one of more than 140 countries around the world. Recently, nearly 9,000 students nationwide competed for about 1,900 Fulbright grants.
In the past six years, 60 USC Dornsife students and alumni have earned this honorable distinction.
Meet USC Dornsife’s 2015-16 Fulbright recipients:
Armed with a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies and international relations, Justin Bogda’s goal is to help increase cooperation in clean energy development between the U.S. and Mexico. As a recipient of the Mexico Binational Business Internship grant, the 2014 graduate will intern with a company in Mexico City and take MBA courses in finance, international investment, and economics through the MBA program at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). After completion of his Fulbright grant year, he plans to earn a joint degree in public policy and law with the aim of pursuing a career in green-technology policy and business development.
“The Fulbright binational business program is unique to Mexico and will allow me to learn more about Mexico’s private sector and its complex relationship with the United States,” Bogda said. “I plan to study how private investment and international cooperation sparked by the 2013 energy reforms can help the U.S.-Mexico region transition to a more significant alternative-energy portfolio.”
Justin Bogda and Nicholas Brown.
Committed to a career in education, Nicholas Brown’s ambition is to become a principal in an underserved community and possibly run for public office. He earned his bachelor’s degree in political science in 2012. While at USC, he honed his teaching skills by serving as a tutor for student athletes. After graduation, he was selected for Teach for America and taught English to fourth-grade students in Indianola, Mississippi. Brown will use the award to teach English at the Universidad EAN in Bogotá, Colombia, working with students who want to go on to be English teachers themselves.
“I hope to inspire this generation of scholars,” he said. “Reading and writing are foundational life skills that connect and authorize us. People, especially those from disenfranchised backgrounds, want and need this foundation.”
Brown also plans to focus on helping to empower refugees displaced by the drug wars and to pursue investigative journalism on controversial issues in the country.
“I’m most looking forward to serving others and the leadership experience this grant will provide,” Brown said.
Alumna Maria Fish is the first USC student to win a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to the tiny principality of Andorra, situated between France and Spain in the Pyrenees Mountains. Graduating in 2015 as a double major in Spanish and narrative studies, Fish has experience teaching with USC Dornsife’s Joint Education Project and was a volunteer English teacher for the Isla Mujeres Alternative Spring Break. Fish has also worked as a student consultant with the USC American Language Institute’s International Teaching Assistant Program where she tutored USC teaching assistants in the English language.
“In Andorra, I will be teaching English to my own class of 14 to 16 year olds in the Andorran school system,” she said. She also hopes to volunteer with a local human rights non-governmental organization (NGO) to help facilitate the Model United Nations program with her students and to travel around Europe.
“I was intrigued by the opportunity to be a cultural ambassador and to engage with younger students,” she said.
Maria Fish and Todd Fredson.
Todd Fredson is pursuing a Ph.D. in creative writing and literature at USC Dornsife. A former Peace Corps volunteer in the Ivory Coast, he will be returning to Abidjan to carry out a Fulbright Research Grant. Fredson aims to complete translations of three poetry collections that were born out of the recent civil war. His work will contribute to the completion of his Ph.D. dissertation in which he considers resistance to neocolonialism in poetry. Upon his return to the U.S., Fredson plans to apply for tenure-track positions in creative writing and literature.
Fredson said his Fulbright project is “a continuation of informal research done while living [in Abidjan] as revolutions and coups transitioned into the first civil war …” He is interested in how the years of ethnic violence are being aesthetically represented.
“I also hope to find poets in the north, as the conflict has been a north/south divide, and each of the three poets I am working with are in the south,” Fredson said. “I am interested in how northern-identified poets are portraying the conflict, knowing that poetry in the north may mean song and oral traditions that are not as page-bound.”
After graduating this May witha double major in East Asian area studies from USC Dornsife and animation and digital arts from USC School of Cinematic Arts, Maracel Guevarra will travel to South Korea. There she hopes to use her Fulbright Korean Studies Graduate Degree Grant to attend Korea National University of Arts or another Korean university and pursue a master’s degree in screen culture studies.
“I will use my grant to study critical film studies and specifically the relationship between Korean cinema and its political, cultural, social, and economic contexts,” she said. “I am interested in studying transnationalist business practices that affect the growth and structure of the Korean animation industry, as well as its film industry at large.”
She is interested in learning the Korean historical and cultural contexts that motivate the South Korean film industry. When she’s not in class, Guevarra hopes to intern in a Korean animation studio. She plans to return to the U.S. ready for a career as an active filmmaker and collaborator between American and South Korean film/animation studios.
Maracel Guevarra and Jenny Ham.
Alumna Jenny Ham is using her Fulbright to further her goal of becoming an expert in the field of bilingual education. She will serve as an English teaching assistant in an elementary or high school in Taiwan. The double major in psychology from USC Dornsife and public relations from USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism graduated in 2013. Currently in the early stages of her career as an English language development teacher in a low-income, urban middle school, she views her time in Taiwan as an opportunity to increase her expertise in bilingual education. After completing her year as a Fulbright scholar, she will continue her theoretical practice through a Master’s/Ph.D. program in the United States.
“An opportunity to be completely challenged professionally, mentally and physically is an opportunity I am always willing to take,” Ham said. “The Fulbright program offers just that, and I am excited for the adventures, learning and growth that is to come.”
Graduating in 2015 with a bachelor’s degree in international relations from USC Dornsife and a minor in applied computer security from USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Nicholas Kosturos is the recipient of one of only two Fulbright awards to Belarus as an English teaching assistant. He will also serve as a reference for faculty and staff on English and American culture.
“I will be organizing various activities to foster intercultural understanding, as well as conducting my own research into Belarusian culture and traditions,” he said.
Kosturos is also the recipient of a Critical Language Scholarship from the U.S. Department of State. He will travel to Vladimir, Russia, for eight weeks of intensive Russian language study ahead of his Fulbright project. It will be his second trip to Russia: In his freshman year he traveled to St. Petersburg as part of a Problems Without Passports trip to the Arctic.
Upon returning to the U.S., Kosturos wishes to pursue a master’s degree in foreign service at Georgetown University with a concentration in Eurasian studies. His goal is to become a political officer in the U.S. Foreign Service.
Nicholas Kosturos and Danielle Lee.
A passion for teaching and children led alumna Danielle Lee to pursue a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (ETA). Now she is bound for Thailand where she will instructprimary, middle, or secondary school students outside Bangkok. There she will participate in Thai language study and ESL teaching techniques, and learn about Thai cultural issues.
Lee graduated in May as a global health major at Keck School of Medicine of USC with minors in international relations and natural science at USC Dornsife. While in Thailand she hopes to partner with medical clinics and NGO’s to better understand the Thai health-care system and the prevalence of major global health issues like HIV/AIDs and tuberculosis. After completing the Fulbright ETA, Lee plans to attend medical school.
“I hope that through teaching, I can also learn from my students about their culture, backgrounds, and personal stories,” she said. “I believe that making true, meaningful relationships with people from all walks of life can truly open your eyes to a greater understanding of the world, and I hope that my time in Thailand will allow me do just that.”
Growing up in a predominantly Armenian community in Glendale, California, Ani Misirian has remained intrigued by the many cultural differences inherent in her bi-cultural upbringing. Thanks to her Fulbright grant, Misirian, who graduated this year with a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience with an English minor, now has the opportunity to explore those differences further: She has won a Fulbright award to go to Armenia to teach English as a teaching assistant in a university.
“My goal during my nine months as a Fulbright ETA is to increase my understanding of Armenian culture and to improve my bilingual communication skills in an educational setting,” she said. As a pre-medical student, Misirian also plans to volunteer in health-related organizations in Armenia to learn more about Armenian life.
“My first visit to Armenia — a trip that only lasted two weeks — solidified my desire to return to the country and to learn more about my heritage,” Misirian said. “Now is a particularly exciting time to be in Armenia, and I’m eager to learn from the country and its people as it develops a modern identity.”
Ani Misirian and Melissa Montalvo.
Alumna Melissa Montalvo’s interests lie in the challenges and barriers to educational achievement faced by women and marginalized populations worldwide. She graduated in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in international relations with minors in French from USC Dornsife and business law from USC Gould School of Law. During her Fulbright English teaching assistantship assignment in the Mexican public school system, her goal is to create an after-school leadership and empowerment program for adolescent girls to help them realize their full potential. Upon returning to the U.S., Montalvo plans to pursue a master’s degree in public administration and continue to work in education policy and administration on a global level.
“My time at USC Dornsife as an international relations major piqued my interest in education of all shapes and sizes,” said Montalvo, who since graduating has worked at the Los Angeles Fund for Public Education. “While I’ve learned about the policy and practice of public education in Los Angeles, I really want to spend more time in the classroom with students, which is why I pursued the Fulbright ETA program.”
Victoria Montrose is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in East Asian languages and cultures and will use her Fulbright grant to travel to Japan. There she will conduct 12 months of field research to create three case studies of Japan’s oldest and most prominent Buddhist universities in order to enhance our understanding of the relationship between religion and modern education in Japan.
“My research project, ‘Making the Modern Priest: Buddhist Universities in Meiji Japan,’ examines the emergence of Buddhist universities from the Meiji to the early Showa periods (roughly the 1880s-1930s),” she said. “By using these three case studies and paying particular attention to shifts in clerical education, I will explore the institutional role of the university as a new source of power and intellectual authority within modern Japanese Buddhism.”
She will be based in Tokyo University’s Religious Studies Department and plans to spend several months conducting archival research at each of her case study universities in Kyoto and Tokyo.
Victoria Montrose and Ava Polzin.
Sophomore Ava Polzin is using the Fulbright to reconnect with her roots. She is one of six students selected to attend the Fulbright Commission Queen’s University Belfast Summer Institute. A double major in geological sciences at USC Dornsife and music industry at USC Thornton School of Music, Polzin will spend four weeks in Belfast learning about Northern Ireland in terms of its political, economic and cultural relationships within the United Kingdom and in the world. The award is part of the Fulbright U.S.-U.K. Summer Institute Program.
Polzin’s insight into the parallels between Native Americans’ experiences and the divided society in Northern Ireland arises from her own family history. “My paternal grandfather’s parents and sister immigrated from Dungannon, before he was born, to Detroit, where they preserved odd threads of animus (however understandable in context) in handing down the prejudice that can dangerously pass from generation to generation,” she said. “My hope with the Summer Institute in Belfast is to get a much deeper sense of the history, cultural identities, and conflict resolution efforts there.” Polzin said.
Alumnus Michael Angel Vazquez graduated in 2012 as a double major in American studies and ethnicity and health promotion at USC Dornsife and disease prevention studies at USC Keck. After graduation, Vazquez, who also minored in nonprofits, philanthropy and volunteerism, served as a Teach for America corps member, Navajo Nation, and taught in New Mexico. He went on to receive a Princeton in Latin America Fellowship and moved to Lima, Peru in 2014 where he has been working with an education-focused NGO. While on a Fulbright ETA grant to Mexico, Vazquez will continue to prepare for his dream job — becoming a principal on the Mexico-California border.
“I am excited to combine both my passions for education and Latin America,” Vazquez said. “Fulbright is a dream come true. It will allow me to explore my own ethnic heritage while continuing to learn about culturally responsive teaching strategies. I eventually want to research these strategies and their effect on student self-esteem and performance, and I feel this opportunity is the best next step for me, personally and professionally, towards achieving that goal.”
Michael Angel Vazquez and Scott Wilbur.
Scott Wilbur is pursuing his Ph.D. in political science and is a recipient of a Fulbright Research Grant to Japan. Asking, “Do states’ electoral systems affect their foreign economic policies?” he will evaluate the effect of the 1994 electoral reform on Japan’s foreign economic policy through a case study of Japan’s public financing of outward foreign direct investment.
“Receiving a Fulbright grant enables me to journey to Japan and do a year’s worth of fieldwork for my dissertation on the politics of government policies toward small and medium enterprises,” Wilbur said. “I am deeply grateful for the support of my professors and colleagues in USC’s political science and international relations program, which has guided and energized my development as a scholar and helped give me this amazing research opportunity.”
He plans to return to USC after the grant to complete his Ph.D. and become a political science professor specializing in comparative political economy and international political economy.