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Record
Number of Pomona College Seniors Awarded Fulbright
Fellowships
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A record-breaking 10 members of the Pomona College class of
2004 have been named Fulbright Fellows. The prestigious
Fulbright Fellowships are awarded each year to college
seniors based on their leadership potential and their
proposed project of study. Designed to increase cultural
understanding between students of the United States and
citizens of foreign countries, the grants vary by country
and generally provide transportation, tuition, books and
living expenses.
Pomona’s 2004 recipients will travel to seven countries –
Poland, France, Switzerland, China, Germany, South Korea and
the Philippines – to teach English or study subjects as
diverse as minority populations in Poland, age-related
spelling errors, the chemical configuration of buckyballs,
red tide in the Philippines and the underground sex economy
in China. Since tracking began in 1991, the previous highest
number of Pomona students selected for Fulbrights was nine
in 2002.
International relations major Monica Boduszynski will travel
to her parents’ homeland of Poland to study Eastern European
politics. She plans to focus her efforts on researching how
Poland’s 2004 accession to the European Union has affected
policy regarding newly forming minority populations in the
country. She will also attempt to evaluate the future impact
of this legislation. Her interest in immigrants and ethnic
minorities rose out of her personal experiences as a member
of the Polish diaspora in the United States, visiting
relatives in Poland and growing up in an ethnically diverse
area of Northern California. “As the daughter of parents who
left Poland for the U.S., I am fascinated by the development
of Poland into a country now experiencing its own surge in
immigration,” she explains. After completing her
Fulbright-sponsored research, Boduszynski plans to obtain a
graduate degree in political science with a focus on
immigrant and minority-related issues within the European
Union and launch a career in academia or with the U.S. State
Department or a non-governmental organization.
Heather Callahan, a public policy/sociology major, will
complete a teaching assistantship administered by the
Fulbright Program teaching English as a foreign language in
France. In addition to teaching, she plans to conduct
research on language and cultural immersion practices for
immigrant students in the French education system. This
teaching assistantship allows Callahan to combine two of her
passions – education and French culture. She first fell in
love with France while studying abroad in Paris her junior
year, when she discovered a sense of community in the
Montmarte district of the city. Because she plans on a
career in education policy, Callahan believes teaching in a
classroom will be an invaluable experience. “The overall
experience of a Teaching Assistantship is without bounds – a
chance to live in France again, my first post-undergraduate
employment, and a solid step towards a career in education,”
she says. Her future plans include earning her teaching
credentials and teaching for a few years before earning a
graduate degree in education or public affairs with the goal
of working in education policy for the United Nations.
Wendy Iskenderian, a double major in chemistry and music ,
will go to Switzerland to research chemistry in the
Institute of Organic Chemistry at the University of Zurich.
There, she plans to join a research group studying
buckybowls, or curved hydrocarbons in which the carbon atoms
align to form a hollow structure similar to the pattern of
panels found on a soccer ball. Since the structure is very
stable and hollow, chemists have envisioned a whole new
array of applications if they could find a way to put other
atoms or compounds inside the buckyball. Iskenderian, whose
long-term career goals include becoming a research professor
of chemistry, is thrilled at the opportunity to help unlock
the buckyball puzzle. Her enthusiasm for scientific
detective work can be traced back to her childhood love of
Nancy Drew detective novels. “Chemistry is a field permeated
with mysteries,” says Iskenderian, “ready to be investigated
by those like me with a detective spirit akin to that of
Nancy Drew.”
Linguistics and Cognitive Science major Natalie Klein will
travel to China to study linguistics. She plans to research
language production at Beijing University, focusing on how
spelling errors might increase as a person ages. Klein will
contrast written Chinese, which consists almost entirely of
characters that cannot be sounded out, with written Spanish,
in which words are always written very much like they sound.
“There is evidence that the mind utilizes both a
sound-it-out mechanism and a whole-world,
irregularities-included mechanism to write,” says Klein. “If
it happens to be the case that, as we age, we begin to rely
more heavily on the former, we should see a bigger problem
with the writing of aging Chinese speakers than with aging
Spanish speakers.” On her return to the United States, she
plans to continue with graduate school in psycholinguistics,
with the goal of becoming a professor, as well as a fiction
writer.
Jacqueline Mark, a psychology major, will travel to Germany
to participate in a teaching assistantship administered by
the Fulbright Program. Mark believes her experience teaching
in Germany will be an invaluable asset to her future goals,
which include getting a graduate degree in education and
working as a teacher, as well as performing education
research or creating educational media. She hopes to work
toward eliminating educational inequalities in the United
States, and says teaching in Germany would provide her with
a more diverse, cosmopolitan outlook. “I hope to incorporate
all of my experiences and my passion for learning by
becoming a teacher in an underprivileged school district,”
says Mark. “I would like to share my knowledge, charisma and
my love for alternate educational methods with students who
haven’t always been challenged and rewarded by the U.S.
educational system.”
Economics major Matthew Noerper will go to South Korea as
part of a teaching assistantship administered by the
Fulbright Program. His interest in Korea was sparked by
personal experience, as Noerper is a Korean adoptee who grew
up in the United States with parents who urged him and his
four adopted Korean siblings to explore their roots. “By
delving into Korean culture, I was also able to solidify my
already strong identity as an American as gradually my
personal curiosity transformed into cultural curiosity,”
says Noerper. “I found the differences between Western and
Eastern cultures to be fascinating and even confusing.”
Noerper hopes to one day be actively involved in U.S.-Korea
relations, perhaps as an international lawyer or through the
Foreign Service. In addition to teaching while in Korea,
Noerper plans to continue his taekwondo training and study
of the Korean language, and to study the architecture of
Korean Buddhist temples, visiting many on his mountain bike.
Abigail Pope, a linguistics major, will travel to France to
take part in a teaching assistantship administered by the
Fulbright Program. Pope will teach English to French
elementary-school students. “I expect to make a difference,
however small it may be, by teaching French students my
language and showing them my culture,” says Pope. “If they
see the world differently, I will, too.” In addition to
teaching while in France, Pope plans to examine bilingual
education in France to see how well it works and what
attitudes are held about it by students, their families and
the government. In the future, Pope is considering becoming
a foreign-language teacher or perhaps a translator.
“Whatever I do,” she says, “will involve using other
languages.”
Asian studies major Elena Shih will study the issues of
prostitution and sex trafficking in China. Shih will serve
as a counselor at a women’s social service organization,
where she hopes to uncover the motivations for and
machinations of the underground sex economy, as well as
governmental response to it. While a student at Pomona, she
worked as an intake counselor for both the Midtown Community
Court in New York City and the Asian Pacific American Legal
Center in Los Angeles, where she gained experience helping
people with issues related to immigration, sex trafficking
and sexual assault. In addition, as a Chinese-American
woman, she says she understands the shame and humiliation
that forces Chinese victims of sexual assault often to
remain silent about traumatic experiences. “It is my goal to
give a voice to these marginalized experiences, and to
deconstruct the very prevalent, yet skewed images – both in
China and the West – of Chinese womanhood,” says Shih. In
the future, Shih plans to work as an immigrant-rights
attorney specializing in advocacy for asylum and human
trafficking cases, and later working to craft international
law and policy regarding practices of prostitution and
international human sex trafficking.
Jason Woo, a biology and public policy analysis major, will
travel to the Philippines to study oceanography. He plans to
research the red tides affecting the country’s public health
and seafood industry. Red tide is a naturally occurring high
level of algae that produces a toxin often fatal to many
fish. To support the country’s efforts to manage the harmful
algal blooms, Woo will monitor the human sources of
pollution, such as sewage and agriculture, that may
contribute to red tides, and corroborate this fieldwork by
laboratory investigation of how pollution/nutrient levels
can trigger its growth. “What makes this subject so
fascinating is that the implications are not only
environmental, but social and economic,” says Woo. “As a
young scientist, I have deliberated over choosing a
lifestyle of serving people, such as medicine, or one of
exploration and discover, like biology. This project would
be an amazing bridge of both objectives.” Woo plans to
continue his study of ocean science in graduate school, and
eventually teach at a university.
Religious Studies major Isaac Zones will teach English as a
Foreign Language in South Korea as part of a teaching
assistantship administered by the Fulbright Program. “Many
of the things I have learned the best in life have been from
inspirational teachers, and they have touched me in a way
that I am still in awe of,” says Zones. “I would like to
give some of what I have received back to those who are
interested in learning things that I am knowledgeable enough
to share.” Zones says he is eager to meet the people of
Korea, learn more about their culture and make human
connections with people. In addition to teaching, he plans
to learn more about Korea’s rich religious traditions,
explore the country’s mountainous terrain and historic
monuments and sample many different foods, including
“learning to love kimchee.” He also plans to take his guitar
to Korea to share American rock-and-roll songs while
learning Korean pop songs, as well. And, as a sports
enthusiast, he is enthusiastic about playing “any sort of
games that Koreans would want to play with me.” On his
return to the United States, Zones plans to become a
high-school or middle-school teacher in his hometown of San
Francisco.
Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, the Fulbright
U.S. Student Program offers opportunities for recent
graduates, postgraduate candidates, and developing
professionals and artists to conduct career-launching study
and research abroad. In its 56 years of existence, the
Fulbright Program has provided more than 250,000 students,
scholars and professionals worldwide with the opportunity to
observe each others’ political, economic and cultural
institutions, exchange ideas and embark on joint ventures or
importance to the general welfare of the world’s
inhabitants.
Pomona College is one of the nation’s premier liberal arts
institutions, offering a comprehensive program in the arts,
humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. Its
hallmarks include small classes, close relationships between
students and faculty, and a range of opportunities for
student research. Visit Pomona College on the web at
www.pomona.edu.
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