Three students and an OU professor have received Fulbright Grants to pursue projects in their field of study and to foster mutual understanding among countries through cultural exchange.
Emily Reigh of Chickasha, Eric Johnson of Tulsa and Laura Bishop of Broken Arrow are the Sooners who have been awarded the grants.
Selected from a national pool of 4,501 applicants, these OU Fulbright grant winners are among 960 other U.S. Fulbright students who will travel abroad for the 2002-2003 academic year.
Laura Bishop won a Fulbright Travel Grant. She will teach English at the Pedagogisher Austauschdienst in Koblenz, Germany. During her time as a teaching assistant there, Bishop intends to examine the process by which students learn foreign languages and to scrutinize the cultural factors that affect foreign language acquisition.
Having been awarded a Full Fulbright Grant, Emily Reigh will pursue research in Florence, Italy next year. The May 2002 graduate will focus her study on the perception and reaction of the 17th-century public to Galileo’s theory of a sun-centered universe.
Eric Johnson, who was also awarded a Full Fulbright Grant, will study the portrayal of World War II in school textbooks during his year in Japan. Johnson, a December 2001 graduate, earned his bachelor’s in international and area studies with a focus on East Asian studies.
Professor of chemistry and biochemistry, Phillip Klebba has also been granted Fulbright Funding for research in France where he will examine the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes.
Established under congressional legislation introduced by former Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the program’s purpose is to give recent graduates and post doctorates an opportunity for personal development and international experience. Fulbright grants are awarded annually through an open competition coordinated by the Institute of International Education. The J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, whose members are appointed by the President, determines which of the applicants will receive grants.
The board awards Full Fulbright Grants, Fulbright Travel Grants and Foreign and Private Grants to recent graduates. University faculty and professionals are awarded Fulbright Scholar Grants.
Candidate selection is based upon academic record, language preparation, personal qualifications and the extent to which a candidate’s proposed project will advance the program’s aim of promoting mutual understanding among nations.
Congress created the Fulbright program in 1946, immediately after World War II, in order to encourage educational and cultural exchange among countries from around the world. Former Sen. Fulbright sponsored the legislation because he saw it as a much needed step toward building an alternative to armed conflict. With that as its goal, the Fulbright program has given over 250,000 participants the chance to observe the political, economic and cultural institutions in order to improve the general welfare of the global community.
— From a staff report
