Sixteen University of Iowa students and alumni have been awarded Fulbright U.S. Student Program grants to conduct research, attend graduate school, undertake creative projects, or serve as English teaching assistants abroad in 2017–18.

This number surpasses the UI’s previous record of 15, which was set last year.

The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government. It is designed to increase understanding between the people of the United States and other countries by providing participants opportunities to study, teach, conduct research, and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.

According to a list published in the Chronicle of Higher Education in February, the UI was named one of the top producers of Fulbright Students for 2017–18. Last year, 15 UI students were awarded Fulbright U.S. Student Program grants, resulting in a tied ranking for 30th on a list of peer institutions.

Recipients of Fulbright grants are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields.

This year’s recipients include:

Benjamin Bush, of Lincoln, Nebraska. Following a long-standing interest in international relations, Ben became interested in applying for a Fulbright after visiting Bulgaria for a conference on fiction writing last summer. He was recently awarded a Fulbright award to live in Bulgaria and continue his work as a writer. In addition to teaching at Sofia University and running workshops, Bush will examine the exodus of Bulgarian youth and incorporate the impact into the draft of his novel.
 

Andrew Calvert, of Singapore, is expected to graduate from the UI in 2017 with an MFA in creative writing. With his Fulbright Study/Research Award to Philippines, Calvert will study American history abroad to write a historical novel based on the lives of the first American teachers in the Philippines in the early 20th century.


 

Kaché Claytor, of Des Moines, Iowa, graduated from the UI in 2016 with a BA in journalism and mass communication as well as Spanish. With her Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Award to Colombia, Claytor will teach English, lead writing workshops, and research the African diaspora in Latin America to study how race is defined in different cultures.


 

Victor Diaz, of Sioux City, Iowa, is expected to graduate from the UI in 2017 with a BA in linguistics (TESL emphasis) as well as Spanish. With his Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Award to Mexico, Diaz will encourage his students to create original works of theater and literature while they learn the English language. He hopes this will allow his students to express and share their cultures in a creative atmosphere.
 

Ian Dunshee, of Des Moines, Iowa, graduated from the UI in 2016 with a BS in anthropology and a BA in French while minoring in geographic information science (GIS). With his Fulbright Study/Research Award to Martinique, Dunshee will make 3-D images and maps of sites containing stone carvings made by the native inhabitants of the French islands of Martinique thousands of years ago. This will benefit local communities by helping preserve their heritage in a format that can be easily shared, stored, and used.
 

Henry Hartzler, of Iowa City, Iowa, is expected to graduate from the UI in 2017 with a BA in elementary education and a minor in Spanish. With his Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Award to the Asturias region of Spain, Hartzler hopes he will deepen his ability to work with Spanish-speaking immigrant students in the future. As an avid rock climber, he also plans to organize an after-school youth climbing club to help inspire confidence and environmental awareness among his students.

Alexis Koch, of Solon, Iowa, is expected to graduate from the UI in 2017 with a BS in human physiology and minors in Spanish, psychology, and chemistry. With her Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Award to Spain, Koch will teach and tutor children with hopes that interacting with people in another culture will improve her ability to communicate complicated ideas.

 

Samantha Korns, of St. Louis, Missouri, graduated from the UI in 2016 with a BA in international studies, Russian, and political science. With her Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Award to Russia, Korns will use her degree in the social sciences to provide Russian students with broad knowledge of the United States. She also will use her entrepreneurial knowledge to lead discussions on how to evaluate business ideas and master an elevator pitch.
 

Jasmine Mangrum, of Chicago, Illinois, is a PharmD/MPH dual-degree candidate at the UI. With her Fulbright Study/Research Award to Romania, Mangrum will study the smoking cessation education program taught to student pharmacists at Cluj-Napoca’s Medical University. She also will integrate pharmacists into the global health workforce and equip them for interventions involving patient care.

 

Nicholas McCarty, of Geneva, Illinois, is expected to graduate from the UI in 2017 with a BS in biochemistry, clinical science, and chemistry. With his Fulbright U.S. Student Program Partnership Award for graduate study at the Imperial College London in the United Kingdom, McCarty will pursue a one-year Master of Research in Systems and Synthetic Biology. His project will focus on engineering E. coli and yeast to produce a variety of therapeutic molecules, including antibiotics, antioxidants, antitumor agents, and appetite-suppression hormones.
 

Lisa Miles, of Santa Fe, New Mexico, is expected to graduate from the UI in 2017 with an MFA in book arts. With her Fulbright Study/Research Award to Indonesia, she will study daluang beaten bark papermaking, natural plant dyes, and printmaking by traveling to urban and remote regions throughout the country. Based at the Bandung Institute of Technology in Java, she also will create a series of one-of-a-kind bark-paper books and teach free papermaking and bookbinding workshops to art students and the public.
 

Hodna Nuernberg, of Iowa City, Iowa, graduated from the UI in 2016 with an MA in French and an MFA in literary translation. With her Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Award to Morocco, she will introduce her students to the writing of contemporary American authors such as Junot Díaz, who are from immigrant backgrounds and whose explorations of complex linguistic identities will resonate with her multilingual Maghrebian students.
 

Kelsey O’Donnell, of Sergeant Bluff, Iowa, is expected to graduate from the UI in 2017 with a BA in international studies and anthropology. With her Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Award to Taiwan, she will teach English at a school in Kinmen, a small island of about 130,000 people. She also plans to volunteer for a local Girl Scouts of Taiwan chapter to assist with community-based activities that focus on life skills, leadership, and decision-making.
 

Scott Sulzener, of New Philadelphia, Ohio, is a PhD candidate in history at the UI. With his Fulbright Study/Research Award to Germany, Sulzener will conduct research critical to his dissertation on Protestant convents that existed in Germany more than a century ago. Sulzener also plans to use his grant to explore the intersection of gender and power in the German provinces.

 

Samantha Westphal, of Urbandale, Iowa, is expected to graduate from the UI in 2017 with a BS in human physiology and a minor in Spanish. With her Fulbright English Teaching Assistant Award to Argentina, Westphal will be a teaching assistant at teacher-training colleges and universities. She also will start a community-engagement project to create a student health club.

 

Katherine Will, of Des Moines, Iowa, is expected to graduate from the UI in 2017 with a BA in Spanish and an English minor. With her Fulbright Teaching Assistant Award to Argentina, Will will work as a language-learning assistant in a teacher training college where she will help undergraduate students pursuing teaching degrees.

For more information on applying for Fulbright, please contact Karen Wachsmuth at karen-wachsmuth@uiowa.edu.