Eight members of the Class of 2014 and one member of the Class of 2012 have been awarded Fulbright grants to work and teach abroad during the 2014-15 academic year. Since 2005, Holy Cross has received a total of 70 Fulbrights, and has consistently been among the nation’s top producers of Fulbright students at the undergraduate level.
The Fulbright Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, is widely recognized as the most prestigious international exchange program in the world. The highly competitive grants are awarded on the basis of academic merit and professional promise.
This year’s recipients are headed to Argentina, England, Germany, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Spain, Sri Lanka and Turkey.
“We had another strong Fulbright year with nine recipients — six English teaching assistants and three research grantees,” says Anthony B. Cashman, director of Distinguished Fellowships and Graduate Studies at the College. “For the English teaching assistants, the countries are quite spread out and include Kyrgyzstan, where Kyle Olsen will be the first-ever Holy Cross Fulbrighter. For the research Fulbrights, Michael Daly ’12 will pursue a master’s in security studies at the University of Sussex in England. Martha Walters ’14 will study organic farming in Indonesia, and Christine Roughan will use her classics training to learn about the burgeoning field of digital humanities at the University of Leipzig in Germany.”
Each year approximately 1,900 U.S. college students are awarded grants through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. The Fulbright Program, the U.S. government’s flagship program in international educational exchange, awards grants 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 300,000 participants — selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential — have had the opportunity to observe each other’s political, economic and cultural institutions. The program operates in more than 155 countries worldwide.
This year’s recipients are: