Fulbright Program: U.S. Applicant Podcast
Transcript For: Fulbright U.S. Student Program 2009-2010 Competition - New Developments
April 14, 2008
Theresa Granza, Director of the U.S. Fulbright Student Program on new developments in the 2009-2010 competition.
Theresa two final
Tony: Welcome to our second season of
the Fulbright US Student podcast. I am your host, Tony Claudino, with
Schuyler: Schuyler Allen and we’re going to kick
things off the 2009-2010 Fulbright season with a very special guest
Tony: Theresa Granza. She’s the
director of the Fulbright US Student program. Welcome Theresa.
Theresa: Thank you very much. It’s- I’m happy to
be here.
Schuyler: I’m excited to here about all the new
additions to the Fulbright program, knowing that it’s a dynamic and changing
program. It changes year to year.
Tony: Yes, tell us what’s new.
Theresa: Well, there are lots of new things in
the Fulbright Program, especially in the English Teaching Assistantship area.
We have new programs in Norway
and Portugal in Europe, in Macau, Vietnam
and Nepal in Asia, and in Colombia in South America.
And all those programs are for American, primarily graduating seniors to serve
as teaching assistantships in elementary schools, secondary schools and
universities alongside teaching English from the host country. So that’s one
new, or additional… those are additions to some already existing programs.
One award that I know is
near and dear to Tony’s heart is in Italy
and is a program, our grant is funded by the Casten Family Foundation at the University of Gastronomic Sciences.
Tony: Otherwise known as Slow Food.
Theresa: Otherwise known as the Slow Foods
Movement. And it’s for a one year masters program at the University of Gastronomic
Sciences. And so I would urge everybody who’s
interested in the slow foods movement to take a look at that opportunity.
Tony: Now, do they have to apply to
the university as well? They probably do, right?
Theresa: No, they do not... students… once
they’re accepted for Fulbright it’s pretty much an automatic acceptance into
the University of
Gastronomic Sciences. So,
apply and you will be admitted.
Schuyler: And where is the best place for
students who are interested in learning more about these new programs, should
they go to the website, to the brochure, or a combination?
Theresa: Actually, the brochure is currently
out and available, but as you can imagine it’s in print, so anything new that
happens—and this is a very dynamic program, something new will happen every
week—we will not have, obviously, in the brochure. So it always pays to go back
to the website and look at it periodically to see if there are any new
programs, opportunities, any cancellations, any additions. They will all be on
the homepage. Any updates that we have will be on the homepage. So it’s easy to
find.
But there are a number
of other new programs within Fulbright as well. There’s a program in Irish
language in Ireland; there’s
a young journalist program in Germany;
and a number of others that would be of interest. So I urge you all to visit
the website and if you have a particular country in mind, go to the country
page and take a look at what’s there. And if you don’t have a particular
country in mind, but you know that you’re interested in doing a program in
business, or a program in environmental sciences, you’ll have to take a further
look at each of those summaries because we don’t have a study index. That would
be too much for us to do since in most countries any field of study is
available.
Schuyler: And then we’re also always available
for phone calls, too, or email.
Theresa: Phone calls, emails. The email
address and they telephone numbers of each of our program managers is in the
brochure and on the website and they’re always happy to receive questions from
you. In addition, if you know the country or have questions about placement in
the country, or need some further information about the country that you plan
to apply to, many of the countries also will accept questions from potential
applicants. And if that’s the case their email address, contact information is
in the individual country summary in the brochure and on the website so that
you can go directly to the country for information.
Tony: I want to go back to the English
Teaching Assistant Awards. We talk to a lot of students that want to do the
English teaching and are not sure which country. You mentioned some new
countries. Also, you mentioned some university teaching. But I would assume
university teaching, they would have to have a little bit more experience?
Theresa: It depends on the country and that’s
why I’m saying you need to look at each of the individual country requirements
because each country has different requirements. Although generally speaking,
graduating seniors are eligible in all countries, but in some countries there
is a preference for more advanced students.
Tony: How about language, in general?
Like in Nepal,
do they need to know…
Theresa: In most countries, language is not
required. That’s not true in all countries. As I say, you have to… In France,
for example, they require French language.
Tony: Portugal should require Portuguese
fluency, obviously.
Theresa: It doesn’t, but certainly some
knowledge of Portuguese would be extremely useful. I would encourage people to
look at the new countries, Portugal and Norway, which are not heavily
subscribed under the best of circumstances, so if you have any interest in
going to either of those countries, take a look at the numbers. Take a look at
the numbers overall. If you’re interested in a particular country, look at the
number of grants that is available to that country and the number of applicants
that they had for that country last year. And unless it’s a regional program, that
is a program that doesn’t have a specific number of grants available to it,
unless it’s a regional program you can pretty much gauge from last year’s
numbers what your odds are for being recommended or getting an award for that
country. Because the number we recommend to the country is generally one and a
half to two times the number of people as there are grants available. So if we
have 10 grants, we would nominate up to 30 people for those 10 grants, keeping
in mind that there are people applying for other awards. If they’re recommended
they may withdraw, take something else, or decide to go to graduate school, so.
And also I should mention the fact that the number of awards that’s listed in
the brochure by country is a soft number. Generally speaking there are more
awards than the number that we publicize because there is an infusion of
additional money for graduating seniors particularly in what we call a central
funds pool. And last year it was almost 2 million dollars in additional funding
and it can be used in any country in the world. So keep that in mind as well
when you look at those numbers because they are not hard and fast.
Schuyler: Just for the uninitiated, let’s say
your starting at a kind of, you know, basic level, from scratch and you don’t
know that much about the differences between traditional Fulbright grant and an
English Teaching Assistant grant. What would be some of the … I mean, clearly
we can speak about the two different types of grants. They’re both full grants.
But there are some nuances there and some details that might be important for
them to be aware of in terms of what the requirements are for the application
and certainly for the actual content of the grant, what they’re expecting. If
you want to describe those nuances…
Tony: And also have full grants gone
up in terms of the number of awards do you think?
Theresa: I don’t know. I can’t answer that.
And I haven’t really done an analysis of the number of grants, but the number
of grants overall has gone up significantly in the last few years from about
1000 to 1500 this year. So it’s a big jump in the number of awards. A
significant number of them are teaching assistantships, but there are increases
other places as well.
In terms of application
for either a full award—or a study and research award rather than calling it a full
award because teaching assistantships are full awards. And the benefits of a
teaching assistantship are generally the same as for study and research awards.
The amount of money that’s provided doesn’t vary. And they all have
international round trip travel as well. Most of them have an orientation
program in the country that you’re going to. Some of them are very extensive
orientations, for example, the Korean teaching assistants get a 6 week
orientation program before they begin their awards. In other countries it’s a
month. Teaching assistants tend to have more in depth orientations than those
who are doing study and research awards.
And the application
process, although the application process itself is the same, there are some
differences in what you need to do for applications. For example, anyone who’s
applying for a study or research award needs to worry about getting affiliation
in the host country. Teaching assistants should not worry about affiliation,
it’s not their responsibility. Their affiliations will be arranged by the host
country, by the Fulbright Commission in the host country that they’re going to.
But if you’re applying for a study or research award, then you need to arrange
affiliation with a university, a lab, a research institute, a museum, a
hospital, whatever it is in the host country, that will provide support to you
during your Fulbright year.
Tony: I definitely think in future
podcasts we’ll go into further detail of the study/research grant and the
English teaching grant. But, what I want to talk about is, it’s April now,
students are going to be graduating or at least leaving school in May. What are
some of the first things you think they should do? Should they meet with their
Fulbright program advisor, should they see the web? What are some of the things
that you’d recommend to a student now to start things?
Theresa: If a student is enrolled in a
university, they definitely should seek out the Fulbright Program advisor on
their campus. If they don’t know who that is they can go to the website and
find the FPA for their institution. If they’re not enrolled in university, they
are absolutely free to contact any of the program managers here at IIE. For
those of you who happen to be…
Tony: Also alumni can contact their
schools…
Theresa: That’s right, alumni can contact
their schools, the schools from which they graduated and the school can accept
them as potential applicants or not. That’s up to the individual institution.
Anybody who is in any one of the cities where we have a regional office should
also be aware of the information sessions that we have and they’ll start
relatively soon, in a few weeks, and you’re free to come to one or two or five
or as many of them as you’d like. And they’re here in New
York, in Chicago, Denver,
Houston, San Francisco
and Washington DC. So take a look at the website; they’re
all listed there.
Tony: We should also let you guys know
that all these info sessions that Theresa’s talking about are going to be made
available in a podcast. So if we do an info session on Wednesday, we’re hoping,
a week later, to be turning it around if you can’t attend any of these,
Schuyler: or you live in a very rural area and are
not able to attend one of these
Tony: or you’re overseas.
Theresa: The other thing that is true is… the
application for next year, 2009-2010, will open on May 1st and I
would urge everyone to go on and register for the application, take a look at
the application… At the same time what you’re doing is registering to receive
the applicant newsletters that are issued once or twice a month-
Tony: Twice a month.
Theresa: -twice a month during the application
season which pretty much runs from May through the beginning of October. So, if
you can come to an information session, you’ll have the podcasts, you’ll have
the applicant newsletters to refer to. But, all of you, whether you’re enrolled
or not enrolled, I would suggest that you begin to think about where you want
to go, what you want to do, and determine now who you want to be your sponsors
in the host country. Regardless of what anybody tells you, it’s going to take
some time to establish your affiliations, and we need… although in most
countries we don’t necessarily have to have the letter of affiliation at the
time of the application, it definitely adds weight to the application if the
support is there.
Schuyler: Pursue more than one affiliation, if
necessary-
Theresa: Exactly.
Schuyler: -because one may not work out, and
it’s always good to have a plan B.
Theresa: Right. And also, we do not accept, we
will not accept any emails, faxes, or anything of that nature in terms of
support letters, in terms of affiliation letters, or references. They have to
be hard copies and signed documents. Now, references that are attached to applications
also, by the way, need to be submitted in hard copy and signed.
Tony: Yes, I guess, to our listeners,
as you can tell, we’re rearing to go and giving you as much information as
possible. Even though the application only goes live May 1st, I
think you can start thinking about the process, talking to your FPAs, looking
at the website-
Schuyler: Asking us questions
Tony: Asking us questions. Don’t wait,
in general. I would say let’s get the ball rolling now.
Schuyler: There are a lot of good resources for
you to dip into and, you know, poke around the website, poke around the
brochure, listen to the podcasts, think deep, and we’re available.
Tony: We’re going to have Theresa more
often in our series.
Schuyler: We will! I think we will. Thank you very
much Theresa.
Tony: Theresa, did you enjoy it?
Theresa: I did.
Tony: Great, thank you very much.
Theresa: OK, thank you.
Tony: Well, this concludes our podcast
for the Fulbright US Student Program.
Schuyler: First of the season!
Tony: First of the season! So, stay
toned for our next podcast, coming shortly. Thank you.
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