Jennifer Caffrey
Jennifer Caffrey ’11, of Mount Airy, Md., has been awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Peru, where she will teach English to Peruvian students. She leaves in March 2012.
A math and Spanish double major, with a concentration in Latin American and Latino Studies, Caffrey studied in Lima, Peru last year through the College’s study abroad program. While in Peru, she took classes and volunteered at a children’s shelter in Lima. Her interactions with the children at the shelter taught her the value of an education and ignited her passion to teach mathematics in an urban environment.
“The Peruvian people have taught me so much about their beloved country, I am eager to be able to return that favor by teaching them about the American language and culture while deepening my understanding of their home,” she says.
In Peru, she will serve as an English teaching assistant, and hopes to start an after-school math program for girls. She wants to use her experience as a female math major to shift the stereotypes that tend to marginalize women in the mathematics field. In addition, Caffrey hopes to take Quechua classes (one of the native languages of Peru), and looks forward to immersing herself in Peruvian culture, while sharing American customs and traditions with her students and friends.
On campus, Caffrey is a member of Student Programs for Urban Development (SPUD), the College’s largest student-run community service organization, and serves as an ESL teacher at St. Bernard’s Parish in Worcester. She is the head tutor in the College’s calculus workshop, a member of the Chapel Choir, and is the vice president of Sigma Delta Pi, the Spanish National Honor Society.
When she returns to the U.S., Caffrey plans to attend graduate school for mathematics education and hopes to teach in urban schools.
Each year approximately 1,000 college students are awarded grants through the Fulbright Program, the U.S. government’s flagship program in international educational exchange. Fulbright grants are made to U.S. citizens and nationals of other countries for a variety of educational activities, primarily university lecturing, advanced research, graduate study and teaching in elementary and secondary schools. Since the program’s inception in 1946, more than 250,000 participants—chosen for their leadership potential—have had the opportunity to observe each other’s political, economic and cultural institutions.
Read about this year’s other Holy Cross Fulbright Grant recipients: Francesca Bruzzese ’11, Kerry Drury ’11, Kristen Dunlap ’08, Herma Gjinko ’11, William Grebe ’11, Jamie McCarthy ’11, Thomas McGlynn ’11 and Kathryn Simison ’11 and Abigail Chorlton Riskind ’11.