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U.S. ArchivesIssue 6 | May 2004 |
East Asia
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The Campus Interview Committeeby Virginia FranklinI am the FPA at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, New York, an independent liberal arts college of approximately 2300 undergraduate students. Since I began recruiting for Fulbright in 2000, St. Francis has had four students apply for awards. We're all quite thrilled at the success of this year's candidate. Alissar Maaliki is a pre-med student who will go to Morocco to study herbal medicine and help compile a database of medicinal plants. What follows is an overview of the campus interview committee process that helped us achieve this opportunity for her and for furthering the Fulbright mission. The combination of expertise and congeniality can make the campus interview effective for the Fulbright process, and less intimidating and more enjoyable for the candidate. I believe that foreign living experience is the most important expertise to have on the committee. The excitement, displacement, adjustment, otherness, bonding, cultural sensitivity, confusion, and adventure that comprise the daily experience of living in a foreign country, is a kind of personal experience that cannot be substituted. Remember that foreign faculty or staff who have come to live and work in the States have that expertise as well as Americans who have lived abroad. I have assembled a committee that has both continuity and flexibility in its membership. In addition to myself there are three core, continuing members, and one or more temporary members who have expertise relevant to the candidates being interviewed. Two of the three core members were chosen for their extensive foreign living experience. The third was chosen because she is well known among the students for her extraordinary rapport with them. Any interview process is intimidating for students; I wanted at least one member with the ability to quickly put students at ease. The temporary members also make important contributions. One of our first candidates applied for a Fulbright to Spain, so I invited a member of the Foreign Language Dept. to conduct part of the interview in Spanish. A member of the Biology Dept. was part of Alissar's committee interview in order to help us judge the feasibility and validity of her project. Having a mixed group of core and temporary members serves several purposes. It gets more faculty and staff involved in the Fulbright endeavor, and raises the profile of Fulbright among the college community. It's also a logistical help to small institutions where a permanent standing committee might not be feasible. As an FPA, you should be aware that members of a new committee need a bit of guidance. Even if some members have held Fulbrights, they would not be familiar with the student interview process. Before the first interview, I send each member of the committee photocopies of the following information: the candidate's application and letters of recommendation; and photocopies of these items from the FPA manual: the sample interview questions; the blank evaluation form; and the filled out samples of the form (poor and well done). Larger institutions with a lot of candidates might want to make the candidates" information available for committee members to drop by and see. During the interviews, I serve mostly as a facilitator rather than a primary interviewer. Since I've worked with the candidates on their applications and have gotten to know them, I give the other committee members the opportunity to do most of the interviewing. We leave time between interviews for members and I to complete our campus evaluation forms. In writing up the evaluation form that gets submitted with the candidate's application, my concern has been to fairly represent the views of all the committee members. Thus I see my job not as writing the evaluation per se, but as combining the responses to provide a coherent whole. For example, I condense oft-repeated comments to a single statement. I include unique important points. I choose comments with the most specific language and leave out overly general comments. I use the members' own words, combining and making minor edits to provide a cohesive style for the evaluation. I don't know whether this method is practicable for FPAs with a lot of candidates, but I hope it gives you some ideas to build on. In addition to inviting and thanking members informally, I write brief letters of invitation and of thanks for serving. Besides being a nice touch of appreciation from Fulbright, such letters document the committee service for any members who might later need to apply for promotion or tenure. Alissar's winning of the Fulbright has taken center stage at St. Francis. The College has an annual Student Recognition Day, and this year Alissar was one of the students honored. She presented a talk on her Fulbright project. The College Relations and Admission Departments have featured Alissar on the College's Web site and in literature sent to prospective students. She"ll also be highlighted in the alumni magazine and the President's annual report. Of course my own recruitment materials will feature her as well. The student Fulbright program's own outreach efforts also played a part in Alissar's success: she first heard about the Fulbright program through her online subscription to FastWeb, a scholarship search service. My experience has been that colleagues genuinely enjoy serving on the campus interview committee. I"ve even had a temporary member ask to be invited back! Members enjoy hearing about the students' plans and interests, and are quite taken with the students' intellectual curiosity and sense of adventure. I"ve also found that members with foreign living experience are especially attuned to the Fulbright concern for mutual international understanding. Getting together for the student Fulbright interviews is committee duty that we all actually look forward to. |
Expanding Opportunities in East and Southeast Asiaby Jonathan Akeley, Program Manager, Asia/PacificNew Developments: Indonesia: An English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) Program has been set up to give U.S. applicants the chance to teach English in Indonesian schools. No previous Indonesian language experience or teaching experience is required. Malaysia: 2 Fulbright/V.J. Shankar Memorial Fellowships for graduating seniors are now available for applicants interested in immersing themselves in Malaysian culture. No previous Malay language experience is required. Mongolia: U.S. Student grant opportunities are now available to Mongolia for all fields of study. EAST & SOUTHEAST ASIA The Fulbright U.S. Student Program now offers awards to 12 countries and regions throughout East and Southeast Asia including: China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mongolia, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. In spite of the wealth of cultures and histories in the region, application numbers for programs in the region remain comparatively low. There were only 623 applications to East and Southeast Asia in the 2004 Fulbright competition, compared to 690 applications submitted for the UK alone (out of a total of 5,720 Fulbright applications). However, the 623 applications does represent a regional high, and the numbers have increased by more than 40% since 2000. Part of the reason why fewer American students apply for Fulbright awards to countries in East and Southeast Asia is due to the language requirements in countries like China and Japan. However, this is only part of the story since Fulbright grants to Korea, Malaysia, Mongolia, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand do not require applicants to possess language skills prior to their arrival in-country. The more important factor in the disproportionately low number of applications to Asia is the unfamiliarity that most Americans possess when it comes to the Far East. Although the number of students choosing to study in Asia has improved in recent years, the number of American university-level students receiving credit for studying in Asia is still less than 7% of the total number studying abroad. Asian languages are far less commonly taught in the U.S. when compared to more traditional Western European tongues, and this has, traditionally, meant fewer Fulbright opportunities for students whose schools did not offer Asian languages. However, the recent proliferation of English Teaching Assistantship programs in Asia has gone a long way in counteracting this pattern. ENGLISH TEACHING ASSISTANTSHIP PROGRAMS IN ASIA The first English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) program in Asia was established in Korea in 1992 with 8 students, and in 2004 it will welcome 72 ETA"s from around the U.S. to teach in Korean secondary schools and live with Korean families. The ETA"s attend a six-week orientation over the summer to give them survival Korean skills and to prepare them for work in the classroom. The successful program in Korea has served as a model for the new programs in Taiwan and Indonesia. 2004 is the second year for the ETA program in Taiwan, and the Fulbright Commission there has already been able to increase the number of awards offered from 9 to 12. The 2005 Fulbright competition will be the first year that students can apply for ETA awards to Indonesia, and 5 grants are expected to be awarded. The ETA programs in Asia are able to draw applicants from a greater range of institutions in the U.S. since they do not require students to have a prior knowledge of the local language and do not require elaborate research or study projects. This has resulted in a group of ETA grantees that represent greater ethnic and regional diversity when compared to the U.S. Student Fulbright Program in general. PACIFIC COUNTRIES Australia and New Zealand are the only countries in the Pacific region where U.S. Student Fulbright grants are available at this time. Both programs are extremely competitive since English is the common language of both nations and since both possess advanced, westernized societies. Australia and New Zealand each received a record number of applications in 2004, with 153 and 124, respectively. Jonathan E. Akeley is the Program Manager at IIE for U.S. Students applying to the Asia-Pacific Region, and he can be reached at (212) 984-5487 or jakeley@iie.org. |
Tales from the Land of the Morning Calmby Charles Restrepo, 2002-2003For a month prior to my departure for Korea, I was frightened by the uncertainties the Fulbright experience would bring. But as it turned out, there was plenty of help available to ease me through what is a big difference between our American outlook and that of Korean society. The faculty at my host school were very
supportive. They did all they could to make the
experience pleasant and enjoyable. My students
played an even larger role in easing my fears.
They crowded around my cubicle, asking questions
about my family, my travels, American life, etc.
They were so eager to learn more about the world.
Their genuine interest brought a smile to my face.
Through a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant
Grant, I was able to teach them about American and
Colombian customs, even as they taught me about
Korea and their own lives. This cultural exchange has done wonders for me, teaching me many lessons about acceptance, friendship, gratitude, and giving. It has challenged some of my convictions and reinforced others. I hope it has done the same for my new Korean friends. |