2014 graduates are serving as Fulbright Scholars, Peace Corps volunteers
A record number of new Elon University alumni received Fulbright awards and Peace Corps placements last spring as a growing percentage of graduating seniors each year pursue global service opportunities inspired by their college education.
The Fulbright U.S. Student Program awarded Fulbright English Teaching Assistant grants to Class of 2014 graduates Mat Goldberg, Julia Okada, Nakhila Mistry, Kyle Whitaker, Lauren Kepke and Eryn Gorang.
Goldberg and Okada will be teaching in South Korea; Gorang is teaching in South Africa; Mistry’s Fulbright takes her to Sri Lanka; Whitaker travels to Malaysia to teach; and Kepke’s award is for a position in Guatemala.
Elon set its previous record for Fulbrights in 2012 when three students and an alumnus secured fellowships for teaching and research.
“We’re incredibly proud of our winners, and indeed of all the students who applied this year and put considerable time and effort into creating strong applications,” said Professor Janet Myers, director of the Office of National and International Fellowships. “Our office has witnessed rapid growth in the number of seniors and recent alums who apply for Fulbright grants as a way to build upon forms of global engagement that began at Elon. In some cases, this means returning to a country or region where a student studied abroad to teach English, or in other cases, pursuing an original research proposal that grows out of an undergraduate research project.”
The Fulbright Program currently operates in more than 155 countries worldwide. The U.S. government’s flagship international exchange program awards about 8,000 grants each year to students and educators across the globe.
Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and administered through the Institute of International Education, the Fulbright was established in 1946 by Congress to “enable the government of the United States to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.”
The Peace Corps
Likewise, Elon University alumni Melanie Witman, Cameron Hawkins and Kylee Bushway are among the newest members of an organization whose mission is to promote world peace and friendship through sustainable change on the grassroots level.
The Peace Corps, a volunteer program run by the United States government, enables participants to go abroad for two years to serve in a variety of roles in government, education and service.
Witman, whose assignment takes her to Paraguay, represents the first student to successfully complete the requirements of Elon University’s Peace Corps Prep Program and subsequently accept a position with the Corps immediately following her graduation.
Elon students taking part in the Peace Corps Prep Program complete courses in environmental science, food security, green design, global awareness and foreign language. They also must incorporate 100 hours of volunteer service into their degree plans.
Hawkins deferred for one year her Peace Corps assignment to Nepal while she completes a fellowship in India with the Comprehensive Rural Health Project. The fellowship is funded by the university’s Periclean Scholars program, which partnered with the CRHP to help bring medical and educational resources to an impoverished part of the country.
Bushway discovered the Peace Corps through her campus job in the Student Professional Development Center. The public health studies and psychology double major from New Hampshire soon approached Elon faculty member Steve Moore – the instructor who oversees the Peace Corps Prep Program – for advice and mentoring.
Like Hawkins, Bushway hadn’t taken many of the prep program’s classes, but her interest in women’s health and youth development earned her acceptance in the Peace Corps. She will spend the next two years as a health care provider in Madagascar.
Moore praised the three students for their dedication to helping a cause greater than themselves.
“I just have the highest admiration and respect for somebody willing to throw themselves into an unknown project in an unknown country with just the thought of wanting to make the world better,” he said. “In today’s world, that’s a huge commitment for any of us to make.”