Fulbright Program: U.S. Applicant Podcast
Transcript For: Jonathan Akeley, Manager South Asia
September 08, 2008
Jonathan Akeley, Manager South Asia, discusses recent developments in the Fulbright Program in the region.
Tony: Welcome to the Fulbright US
Student Applicant podcast. I am your co-host, Tony Claudino, with
Schuyler: Schuyler Allen. Today we are joined by
Jonathan Akeley who is the area manager for
Jonathan: South Asia.
Tony: This is a really hot area for
American applicants I would assume, especially with India. Can you give us a nice
overview of…
Jonathan: India’s
been the 400 lb elephant in the room here with South Asia
for a long time, understandably. South Asia as a region is a fairly small
number of countries so the overwhelming number of applications that we receive
for the Fulbright program is for India. We tend to receive between
140 and 160 applications a year.
Schuyler: And how many grants, comparatively, in
that ratio?
Jonathan: In previous years we’ve had about 20
grants, but on the 4th of July this year the US and India signed a
new agreement for educational exchanges in which for the first time the Indian
government is actually going to be contributing to the Fulbright program and
this is going to effectively double the size of the program. So what we’re
hearing now is that for next year we’re going to have about 35 – 40 grants.
Schuyler: Excellent.
Tony: That’s great. What are some
fields of study that you currently see… I guess we’re just going to focus on India
for a second, but what are some fields of study that you see, some fields of
study that you’d like to see more of, cities, for example.
Jonathan: India is lucky in that it receives
a real strong diversity in the types of applications that it gets. India, as opposed to a lot of other countries in
Asia, receives a good number of arts
applications. Particularly when compared to other countries. Public health is a
popular field in India.
But they receive a pretty wide diversity. I think there is an interest with the
Fulbright program in India
in receiving more applications in the sciences, in fields like agriculture,
and…. I don’t know how to phrase it.
Schuyler: Technically inclined fields, would you
say?
Tony: Yeah, how about technology for
example?
Schuyler: IT? I mean there’s this huge
institution in India
that everybody should know is
Jonathan: the Indian Institute of Technology.
Schuyler: … as competitive at MIT or Stanford or
perhaps more so. Do you ever see any applications, you know, to go there?
Jonathan: We tend not to. I mean, as a general
rule in Fulbright, we tend to get relatively few applications in engineering
and the highly technical fields, but India is one of the places where they
would welcome more applications, I mean they don’t have to affiliate with one
of the Indian institutes of technology, but it would just depend on the needs
of the projects. But they are interested in both the sciences and people who
are researching contemporary topics on modern India, the politics, society,
things like that.
Schuyler: It is a fairly large country as well
and so do people tend to be satellites around the city, in terms of where they
want to do their grants, or where would you like to see more grants regionally
within India?
Jonathan: I think people do a pretty good job of
breaking it up in terms of where they base their grants. You know, people tend
to be in cities, but not always. People aren’t just stuck in New Delhi and Mumbai. The Indian educational
system… you know they have universities set up all around the country and
people tend to spread out quite a bit.
Tony: That’s great.
Schuyler: Another similar question from previous
podcasts- language acquisition. Of course, English is the lingua franca in India
now, which probably explains the popularity, why it’s the 400 pound elephant in
the room. However, there is the hospitality language level and so where would I
begin to learn Hindi or some of the other languages.
Jonathan: OK, so English… so no prior knowledge of
the language is required for applicants who want to go to India. But what we tell them is
that they have to propose a project that is appropriate given the level of
language skills that they’ll have. So people who don’t have strong South Asian
language skills should not be proposing to do a bunch of interviews in a rural
area because it’s just not realistic. They are not going to have the capacity
to do that. And while the educated classes in India do speak English, if you get
into the less developed areas, people with lower education levels, they’re not
going to speak English. So you have to develop a project that’s appropriate to
your skill level. Which sounds like common sense, but sometimes it gets lost in
the shuffle.
And another thing that
people have to pay particular attention to… you mentioned Hindi, but in some
parts of the country, Hindi is just not the spoken language. So if you’re
proposing a project in South India, Tamil
might be the more appropriate language. Or if you’re in East
India, then Bengali might be the language. So catching things like
that is important and so again it sounds like a no brainer to understand the
local culture of where you’re applying to in India, but it does trip some people
up.
Schuyler: Ok, so, but if I wanted to learn one
of those languages, you gave some great tips, and then also the Critical
Language Enhancement award is a really nice fit in this example because some of
those languages are offered through the Critical Language Enhancement Award
program.
Jonathan: Right, so the number of universities
in the US
that teaches South Asian languages is fairly small and if they do teach a South
Asian language it’s probably going to be Hindi. So if there is no instruction
in Hindi on a particular campus then you could look to students who might be
from India that might be native speakers of the language that you could arrange
tutoring sessions with, or of course the ubiquitous software programs. But
yeah, there are things like that that people can do to get at least some feel
for the language.
And then, the
requirements for the Critical Language Enhancement Award vary depending on
which South Asian language the person is interested in. I think with Hindi they
do want people to have at least a basic level, a year or so of language. Again,
there are opportunities to… there are certain summer programs held by US
universities where they do intensive study in South Asian languages and people
can pick up at least some skills.
Tony: What about the other countries
in the region?
Schuyler: Neighboring countries, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh?
Jonathan: You know the other countries in South Asia actually tend to be pretty under-subscribed in
the number of applications that they receive.
Schuyler: Are there the same number or level of
grants offered in those neighboring countries? Are they smaller, compared to
the geographic size?
Jonathan: It varies. I mean, yeah, compared to India
they are all much smaller. I would say between Bangladesh,
Nepal and Sri Lanka, Nepal tends to have the most
grants. They have about 10 a year. Bangladesh
tends to be between 6 to 10 a year and Sri Lanka usually has around 5. Nepal
this year is also beginning an English Teaching Assistantship Program. So
they’re planning to have 2 ETAs there in 2009. Nepal is a fantastic place to base
research. We tend to get more applications there than we do in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, but probably not as many
as we could accommodate.
Schuyler: Again, you probably see the fields of
study fitting the country a little bit…
Tony: Exactly.
Schuyler: So in Nepal, people probably... you see,
I’m sure you see all through the region a lot of people wanting to do religion
and things of that sort.
Tony: Or environmental studies, no?
Jonathan: Religion, philosophy can be a big topic
for Nepal,
again, as with most countries, public health is a big program. We actually have
a creative writer going there this year. So Nepal, even though it doesn’t get a
lot of applications, tends to get a pretty good spread of applications. All of the
countries in South Asia are pretty flexible in
terms of not requiring a high level of language ability before they start. So
people applying to Nepal or Bangladesh or Sri Lanka are not required to have prior
knowledge of the language, but we do encourage people to study the language
when they begin their grants, to study it concurrently because it enriches the
experience pretty significantly.
Schuyler: So, when you talk about language
requirements, again, if I wanted more details, I could go to the website and
get that information?
Jonathan: Uh huh. It’s all listed on the website
for each of the country summaries.
Schuyler: OK, great.
Tony: How about the fields of study
again. I know you mentioned earlier that India was interested in science and
technology grants, or more science grants and technology—can we put them
together?
Schuyler: Yes you can.
Jonathan: You can put them together.
Tony: What about the other, what about
Sri Lanka or Nepal.
Any fields?
Jonathan: I would say, in the case of Sri Lanka,
unfortunately, they get so few applications that any more applications would be
good. I mean, the political situation in Sri
Lanka has been pretty tenuous in recent years and I think
that tends to discourage people from applying, particularly since it’s not
realistic to propose a project that would be in the northern or eastern parts
of Sri Lanka;
they’re very unsettled. In Bangladesh
we tend to get a pretty high number of public health projects and economic
development. Public health and economic development are the dominant fields.
Getting applications outside of that would be welcome.
Tony: Great. Well, thank you very much
Jonathan.
Schuyler: Thank you.
Jonathan: My pleasure.
Tony: This is great. Look forward to
having you on the show again soon.
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