Fulbright U.S. Student
Grantee Newsletter

A Journalistic Coming-of-Age Story in Singapore

Dan Reimold, 2008-2009, Singapore

It is a sentiment embodied in the city-state's larger image.  Only 43 years after gaining absolute sovereignty, the country once dismissed as "a little red dot" and "a piece of snot" has become an economic, scientific, and technological power envied worldwide.  And yet, it remains unsatisfied.  

One joke among locals: the national bird is the crane.  Not the long-necked winged-thingie, but actual cranes, construction cranes, heaving, weaving, and towering over landscapes to and fro.  Besides gray clouds that ramble fitfully in otherwise sunny skies, the cranes are the most common sight filling the skyline.  They are symbols of a country forever seeking to improve upon itself and transform.  

Its leadership is also being forced to reexamine and transform certain parts of what a student said to me recently is "an old model of media control in an uncontrollable new media world."  Student journalism is at the heart of this transformation and my research in Singapore.

I am a journalism scholar incredibly passionate about student media.  I believe the student press represents journalism at its rawest, most idealistic, most innovative and most influential.  I also believe every country's student press deserves to be explored and have its stories shared.  

My first stop outside the United States: Singapore, where an excitement associated with student and youth media currently reverberates louder than anywhere else in the world.  Over the past decade, efforts undertaken by the government, universities, and major media companies here have led to a meteoric rise in interest and infrastructure surrounding campus media specifically.   

If you count the founding of the country's first campus newspaper in 1994 as a symbolic starting point, Singapore boasts a modern student press that is only 15 years old, still in the awkward, adolescent, figuring-things-out phase.  It is attempting to find its identity, determine how it wants to impact the country and figure out how to deal with the opportunities and constraints that are helping and holding it back along the way.  This coming-of-age represents the foundation of the story I'm seeking to tell this year.  

And make no mistake; amid this adolescence, there are growing pains.  Censorship occurs.  A sense of fear about challenging the government and pushing certain out-of-bounds markers still lingers.  A public skepticism of the press makes it tough to get sources to talk.             

Overall, however, in an academic environment in which young people are still hesitant to speak up in class, student press outlets increasingly serve as the voices of this island nation, promoting openness and empowerment and providing a reflection of youth culture that is clearer and more insightful than anything that has come before.

To comment on Dan Reimold's article on State Alumni, please click here.

Alumni Perspective: The Great Accomplishment

Nicole Harper, 2007-2008, Slovenia (left)

My Fulbright grant to the coastal region of Slovenia allowed me to conduct research that employed a unique methodological approach for qualitative study; converging narrative inquiry with ethnographic participant-observation.  The recording of my Fulbright experience in Slovenia was woven together with insightful narratives gathered through interviews and informal conversations.  The data methods informed one another, allowing deep insight into the inherent complexities of my research questions, painting a captivating picture of my Fulbright experiences and those of others immersed in Slovene culture.

The dissertation, which I completed shortly before the end of my time in Slovenia and defended soon after, was entitled, “Cultural Aesthetic Experience: Perceptions of Learning Developed through Cultural Immersion.”  As an art educator, avid traveler, and now scholar, I have been intrigued with the richness of meaning that develops through the absorption of aesthetic experience.  As an international educator, I am also interested in the process of meaning-making that individuals undergo as they adapt to unfamiliar cultural environments for extended periods of time.  My Fulbright grant allowed this inquiry into the nature of cultural aesthetic knowledge to be met with great substance and intensity.  Slovenia, a place, people and culture I knew very little about prior to my arrival, developed into a meaningful sensory experience that transformed my thinking in significant ways.  The warmest result of the Fulbright experience was revealed in the act of enduring friendship shown by my visitor: the continuing bond of companionship gained through openness and sharing.

To comment on Nicole Harper's article on State Alumni, please click here.