Record Number of MIIS Students Awarded Prestigious Fulbright Scholarships

May 10, 2012

Six students from the Monterey Institute will receive U.S. Fulbright scholarship awards for the 2012-2013 academic year, the most in the Institute’s 57-year history. This surpasses last year's record of five, which had MIIS students landing more U.S. Fulbrights on a per capita basis than every top-ten school in the 2012 U.S. News & World Report college rankings, with a higher applicant success rate than all but one of these leading schools. A seventh Fulbright applicant from the Monterey Institute is an alternate and may still be selected.

Administered by the U.S. Department of State since 1946, the Fulbright Program is the county's flagship international educational exchange program, sending awardees to study, teach and conduct research in more than 155 countries each year.

"We are very proud of the Monterey Institute students who have been honored with this recognition," said Monterey Institute President Sunder Ramaswamy. "Their success in the extremely competitive Fulbright Program is a reflection of their hard work and focus on making a difference, as well as the quality of the education they received at the Monterey Institute."

The six MIIS students receiving Fulbright awards this year are:

• Robin Chen (MATFL ’12) will promote language education and cross-cultural learning in Taiwan.
• Patrick Gaebler (MATESOL ’12) will help increase the number of English-speaking Brazilians in preparation for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
• Tess Harris (MAIEP ’12) will research best practices for water conservation on farms in Cyprus.
• Jaymee Martin (MATESOL’11), fluent in French and Spanish, will teach English in Andorra.
• Jessica Matzen (MATFL ’10) will use cutting edge methodologies to promote language proficiency and cross-cultural communication in Belgium.
• Elizabeth Romanoff Silva (MPA ’11) will research the role that women authors have played in catalyzing gender equality in the Slovak Republic.

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