A pair of student Fulbright winners from Minnesota State University has school officials singing the praises of both the students and the Fulbright program.
Mary Nelson, an international business and French major who completed her studies in July, and Lucas Brun, who graduated in May with a bachelor’s degree in German, most recently received Fulbrights. Nelson will travel to Taiwan and work as an English as a second language instructor. Brun will work as a U. S. teaching assistant in Austria. His award is for one year with possible renewal for a second.
Nelson, who started her Fulbright teaching assignment early this month, is teaching and studying in Taiwan until next summer.
“Mary was one of those very special students,” said Caryn Lindsay, who supervised Nelson during Nelson’s year of employment at the Kearney International Center and also helped with Nelson’s application. “She’s so vivacious and intelligent and grounded all at the same time. She’s very ambitious and sincerely interested in other cultures and other people.”
She studied abroad in France in spring 2007. While working at the Kearney International Center, she was the College of Business student ambassador and helped to recruit and advise business students on study- abroad opportunities.
Lindsay said Nelson’s selection as a Fulbright student scholar wasn’t surprising. Nelson, she said, did her homework and always seemed genuinely interested in Taiwan.
Her glowing personality didn’t hurt during the interview phase of the process, either.
“She’s so easy to get along with,” Lindsay said.
Brun, meanwhile, has what instructors called a rare commodity: interest in an area that not many people are interested in.
“He’s pretty passionate about German linguistics,” MSU German instructor Cecilia Pick said.
Fellow German instructor Nadja Kramer called Brun adaptable, independent and eager to learn.
Brun will teach at two Austrian schools in Güssing, Burgenland, starting in October, continuing there through May 2009. At MSU he was president and vice president of the German Club and a member of the charter Phi Sigma Pi chapter, national honor fraternity. He also assisted with an English as a second language writing course.
“The Fulbright will really take him where he wants to go, which is ultimately a Ph.D. program in German linguistics,” Kramer said.
The Fulbright program is a prestigious one. Pick, a former Fulbright student scholar herself, said the villages and towns around the world that play host to a Fulbright do so with open arms.
“You have instant status in the town where you are placed,” Pick said. “And you are very welcomed in the classrooms by your students.”
At MSU, Lindsay helps students interested in applying for a Fulbright scholarship. The process begins in September when students submit their applications, which includes a very specific proposal, a narrative essay about themselves, an oncampus interview and an application review by a committee faculty members, some of whom are past Fulbright winners.
That group rates the applicants and forwards them all on to a national review committee. That committee culls the field to a few that are forwarded on to the countries where students hope to study.
Those countries, then, make the final decision.
“It’s an incredibly prestigious scholarship,” Lindsay said. There are already a handful of students anxious to begin the Fulbright process when classes commence Tuesday.
“A Fulbright opens doors,” Kramer said. “It says something about the quality of the applicant from the getgo.”
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