Six students get Fulbright

Six Hopkins students will have the chance to study and conduct research abroad at no expense.

Winners of the Fulbright scholarship, they are among 1,106 winners nationwide who will study in any one of 100 countries for a year.

Class of 2004 graduates Barkha Gurbani and Ami Karnik and graduate students Sally McGrane, Jacquelyn Williamson, Edward Monroe Jr. and Jill Pederson were named Fulbright Scholars earlier this year.

The Fulbright scholarship, sponsored by the State Department's Educational and Cultural Affairs Department, gives students and professionals the opportunity to begin graduate study and research in a foreign country in an effort to increase the exchange of ideas and knowledge between the United States and other countries.

Students design their own program based on academic experiences or interests.

Named after Senator William Fulbright, who sponsored legislation to fund the program in 1946, the scholarship covers travel, schooling and living expense fully for one year while the scholars conduct their research.

Assistant Dean of Academic Advising John Bader, himself a former Fulbright Scholar in India, advises all Fulbright applicants at Hopkins.

"The Fulbright is something I really believe in," Bader said. "It was an extraordinary, life changing experience, and the time I spent in India was the most educationally intense of my life.

"It's a complete experience, from the time you open your eyes in the morning, until the time you close them exhausted at night -- it's just a bombardment of new ideas and images."

Gurbani, like Bader, has chosen to study in India, the second graduating senior in a row that Hopkins will send there on a Fulbright. Hopkins alumnus Mahnu Davar traveled to India last year on a Fulbright scholarship.

"It's really a thrill for me to be able, two years in a row, to send young Fulbrighters right out of college, like I was, to India," Bader said.

Drawing on her experience writing a thesis about the feminization of the AIDS epidemic, Gurbani will conduct research at the AIDS Research and Control Center in Bombay, undertaking a public service project for women widowed by AIDS.

Gurbani graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in public health and a minor in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Karnik will travel to Malaysia to study the integration of the recently formed Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) common market.

The market hopes to transform its free trade cooperation into a full-blown economic community by 2020, and Karnik will use the Malaysian electronics industry as a case study.

Karnik graduated in May with a degree in International Studies, having founded the Diplomat, the first undergraduate journal on international affairs.

She is no stranger to learning abroad, having studied abroad at SAIS in Bologna, Italy and conducted independent research in India.

A third undergraduate student, '04 graduate Emily Stecker, was also named a Fulbright scholar but declined the opportunity in favor of a program offered by Princeton University, Princeton in Asia. Stecker will travel to Malausia to teach English at Universiti Sains Malaysia in Penang.

Students interested in the Fulbright or other academic scholarships should visit Academic Advising's webpage at http://www.jhu.edu/~advising/scholarships/ and schedule an appointment to meet with Bader.

He said it was too late to start applying for a Fulbright for next year, as the deadline to submit a proposal to Hopkins is Sept. 24.