Fulbright

Tag: Fulbright

Senior Elizabeth Perry Awarded Fulbright Commission Teaching Appointment in Austria

Hiking boots may seem a bit nontraditional as a college graduation present, but Elizabeth Perry can’t imagine anything she’d appreciate more.

The Lawrence University senior voice performance major from Portage, Mich., will spend the coming year in the midst of the hike-friendly Austrian Alps as the recipient of a United States Teaching Assistantship through the Fulbright Commission in Austria.

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Elizabeth Perry ’14

Beginning in October, Perry will begin an eight-month appointment as an English teaching assistant at two secondary schools in Reutte, a small town in the Tirol region of western Austria.

“I plan to spend plenty of time outdoors in the most beautiful place I’ve ever lived,” said Perry. “My parents have already told me they bought me a pair of hiking boots for graduation. I’ll be completely surrounded by mountains and I’m from the flatlands of the United States, so I plan to put those boots to good use.”

Perry’s teaching appointment will send her back to Austria. She spent the fall term of 2012 in Vienna on an off-campus study program there.

“I went specifically because Vienna’s such a fantastic city for music, art, culture and especially opera, which is what I study,” said Perry, who performed in Lawrence’s 2012 production of Henry Purcell’s “The Fairy Queen.”  “I sort of came back with German. I went in for music and I came back and changed my whole degree to fit German in somehow.”

Although a bit late in her college career, Perry decided to add a minor in German, the official language of Austria, in her fourth year at Lawrence.

“It was the last addition to my degree and the first of it that I completed,” she says proudly.

Perry is no stranger to traveling abroad. She went to Italy for a summer voice program, participated in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland and spent time before her off-campus study program in Vienna began as an au pair in Switzerland.

With no prior formal teaching experience, she sees her appointment as an ideal launching pad to what she hopes will be a career in music education.

“I’ve done a lot of one-on-one teaching and am currently working with three Lawrence students. They don’t study voice, they are just interested in singing. But this will actually be my first official classroom teaching experience,” said Perry, who has sung with one of Lawrence’s three different choirs — concert choir, Cantala women’s choir and Viking Chorale — each of the past five years.

“I definitely model my pedagogy on what I’ve learned from my professors here, and I’d love to teach within a liberal arts environment.”
— Elizabeth Perry

Joanne Bozeman, Perry’s vocal teacher and academic advisor, calls her “a remarkably well-rounded singer.”

“She is truly immersed in the liberal arts with two minors (German and English) in addition to her voice performance degree and interest in singing pedagogy,” said Bozeman.

“With her previous sojourns in Vienna, Italy and Switzerland, she is primed to be an effective English teacher through the Fulbright program.”

The news of her acceptance in the program did put on Perry’s original post-graduation plans on hold. She had been admitted to the vocal pedagogy program at Ohio State University.

“I’ve worked it out and have deferred my admission so that when I return to the United States I’ll study at OSU in the fall of 2015,” said Perry, who will receive her bachelor of music degree Sunday, June 15 at Lawrence’s 165th commencement.

“Someday I would love to teach at Lawrence or a school like Lawrence. I definitely model my pedagogy on what I’ve learned from my professors here. I’d love to teach within a liberal arts environment. I have a feeling I won’t be able to help myself but to bring a little bit of my liberal arts experience into the classroom next year. It’s a tradition I hope to continue throughout my teaching.”

Perry is one of approximately 140 college graduates from the United States selected to  teach in Austria under the auspices of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education and Women’s Affairs Foreign Language Teaching Assistantship Program, which brings talented young people from abroad into the classrooms of secondary schools in communities large and small throughout Austria.

About Lawrence University
Founded in 1847, Lawrence University uniquely integrates a college of liberal arts and sciences with a nationally recognized conservatory of music, both devoted exclusively to undergraduate education. It was selected for inclusion in the Fiske Guide to Colleges 2014 and the book “Colleges That Change Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About College.” Individualized learning, the development of multiple interests and community engagement are central to the Lawrence experience. Lawrence draws its 1,500 students from nearly every state and more than 50 countries.

Anthropologist Carla Daughtry Awarded Fulbright Fellowship

Lawrence University cultural anthropologist Carla N. Daughtry has been named a recipient of a 2010 Fulbright Senior Scholar Award.

Daughtry will spend the 2010-11 academic year at the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR) at American University in Cairo, Egypt.

During her nine-month fellowship appointment, which begins in mid-August, Daughtry will teach courses on American perspectives on race, ethnicity, diaspora and globalization. She also will support student and faculty research activities through CASAR.

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Carla Daughtry

“This is a wonderful opportunity to re-immerse myself in Cairo and Egyptian culture and enhance my own teaching and scholarship,” said Daughtry, who previously spent a year at American University in Cairo as an undergraduate student in the late 1980s. “My Fulbright year in Cairo will strengthen ties between Lawrence University and Egypt, where Lawrence students have enrolled for a term or year abroad at American University in Cairo. My experiences also should help deepen the richness of Arabic and Middle Eastern studies for students here at Lawrence.”

This is the second time Daughtry has been recognized by the Fulbright Scholars Program. While in graduate school at the University of Michigan, she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 1992 that also took her to Egypt, where she studied Arabic at Cairo’s Center for Arabic Studies Abroad.

She also spent two years (1998-2000) in Cairo as a research fellow at American University working with displaced Sudanese refugees who fled Sudan’s civil war as part of her doctoral dissertation field work.

Daughtry , who joined the Lawrence faculty in 2000, focuses her scholarship on Middle East and North Africa cultures, transnational and urban refugee communities and ethnic and gender issues.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in international relations at Mount Holyoke College, Daughtry earned two master’s degrees — one in Middle East and North African Studies and one in cultural anthropology — and her doctorate in cultural anthropology at the University of Michigan.

Established in 1946 and sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the Fulbright Scholar Program is the federal government’s flagship program in international educational exchange. It provides grants in a variety of disciplines for teaching and research positions in more than 120 countries.

Lawrence University Seniors Hulburt, Neitzel Awarded Fulbright Fellowships to Germany

APPLETON, WIS. — Jane Hulburt credits her “awesome” high school foreign language teacher, Margaret Draheim, for exciting her about German. Spencer Neitzel’s interest in Germany was stoked after spending a month in Freiburg as an exchange student in 2005.

Hulburt

Neitzel

The two Lawrence University seniors will soon immerse themselves in all things German after being named Fulbright Scholars and awarded fellowships to spend nine months in Germany as English teaching assistants. Hulburt, who is from Appleton, and Neitzel, who lives in Northfield, Minn., are the third and fourth Lawrence students this spring to receive a Fulbright Fellowship. Since 2001, 13 Lawrence students have been named Fulbright Scholars.

Hulburt will be making her third trip to Germany when she begins her teaching apprenticeship in September. She spent the summer of 2003 in Bavaria as a participant in her high school’s German-American Partnership Program (GAPP) and then traveled to Freiburg as a Lawrence sophomore in 2007 on a study abroad program.

“I’ve always been interested in teaching and this is the ultimate teaching experience,” said Hulburt, who plans to leave a month early so she can spend time with her former host family from her GAPP experience. “I’ve also had a long-standing interest in German culture, so the opportunity to go to Germany and teach is going to be the best of both worlds for me.”

A German and piano major who performs with the Lawrence Jazz Singers and the Lawrence Concert Choir, Hulburt spent four years (2003-07) teaching a children’s choir at Appleton’s Memorial Presbyterian Church near the Lawrence campus. She hopes to incorporate her music background into her teaching lessons in Germany.

While “officially” an English teaching assistant, Neitzel said he plans to focus less on grammar and more on the application of the language and the study of American culture.

“I’m interested in the differences and similarities between American and German culture and this will be a great opportunity to explore those,” said Neitzel, a German and psychology major. “I’m hoping to learn more and think seriously about by own identity as an American since I will be representing the United States.”

Hulburt sees her upcoming Fulbright appointment as a “life” experience, not just a teaching experience.

“I’ll be working with people I normally wouldn’t have a chance to and be in an environment where English isn’t the first language,” said Hulburt. “This is going to take me out of my comfort zone, but in a good way, and help me grow as a person.”

The fact that the Fulbright program doesn’t require extensive teaching experience is what Neitzel initially found appealing and persuaded him to apply for the fellowship.

“You learn first hand the pedagogy in Germany is different than here in the states,” said Neitzel, who is hoping his teaching assignment will wind up at a school in Hamburg. “It’s an intense program, but it also does a great job of helping you find out what you want to do with your life.”

With an eye on working in the travel and tourism industry, Neitzel is hoping his Fulbright experience could help lead to a career directing tours in Germany, preferably on a bicycle.

Hulburt sees her upcoming Fulbright experience as a launching pad as well.

“I know my time at Lawrence is just about done and I’m ready to move on to the next chapter in my life. That’s exciting. I don’t know what’s ahead, but I’m looking forward to finding out.”

Created by Congress in 1946 to foster mutual understanding among nations through educational and cultural exchanges, the Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s premier scholarship program. Since its founding, it has supported opportunities for nearly 300,000 American students, scholars and other professionals in more than 150 countries. Fulbright alumni have become heads of state, judges, ambassadors, CEOs, university presidents, professors and teachers. Thirty-seven Fulbright alumni have earned Nobel Prizes.