For the first time, Fordham University has been named by the Chronicle of Higher Education as one of the nation’s top-ranked research universities earning the highest number of Fulbright awards for U.S. students.
Fordham was among a select 30 universities to earn double-digit Fulbright awards in 2008-2009. It tied Tufts University, the University of California at Davis and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with 10 awards each.
The University of Michigan at Ann Arbor earned 31 awards, the most of any institution, and Harvard finished second with 29 awards. Results appeared in the Chronicle’s Oct. 24 issue.
Fordham earned nine awards last year, falling just one award shy of making the annual ranking.
“To be ranked among the nation’s top-producing Fulbright programs has long been a goal for Fordham,” said Regina Plunkett-Dowling, Ph.D., Fordham’s Fulbright program adviser. “Although this is an important milestone, we are not going to rest. We want to continue to move up the list.”
Plunkett-Dowling added that Fordham produced an “excellent yield rate,” with 10 students out of 32 applicants receiving awards. In contrast to Fordham’s yield of 31 percent, Michigan yielded 21.5 percent and Harvard yielded 27 percent.
About 1,500 students and 1,300 scholars from the United States and abroad are studying and working on Fulbrights this academic year.
Fordham also received an 11th Fulbright award administered by the Fulbright Program, but it did not qualify for the Chronicle count; the inaugural Serrano Scholarship went to Emiliano Reyes (CBA ’07) to attend the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna.
The awardees, who will be traveling to four continents, represent three undergraduate schools and four graduate schools. In addition, five of the 11 awardees are first-generation Americans.
“Fordham has long promoted close collaboration among its faculty and students; now we see those efforts bearing fruit,” Plunkett-Dowling added.
Fordham’s winners are:
Afua Atta-Mensah (LAW ’04), who received a Fulbright Scholarship to Ghana to study marriage and property rights of women and the law;
Douglas J. Ballas (FCLC ’08), who received a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Germany;
Brendan G. Coffey (FCRH ’08), who received a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Korea;
Marcia J. Harr, a doctoral candidate in the Graduate School of Education (GSE), who received a Fulbright Scholarship to Laos to study “Progress through Service: Service Learning to Advance Communities with Education;”
Jonathan J. Hogan (FCRH ’08), who has won a Fulbright Scholarship to Brazil to study the role of horror comic books in the expression of popular culture under a dictatorship;
Mohsin Mohi-Ud-Din (FCRH ’07), who won a Fulbright Scholarship to Morocco to develop a pilot arts education program for children;
Emily Murphy (GSE ’08), who received a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Hong Kong;
Kara Noran (FCRH ’08), who received a Fulbright Scholarship to Germany to study the struggles of immigrants and social inequalities within the German school system;
Andrew Puntel (FCRH ’04), who received a Fulbright Scholarship to Latvia to explore Latvian Choir Culture and the Song Festival Tradition;
Andres Romero (GSAS ’08), who received a Fulbright Scholarship to Indonesia to study child protection efforts following the 2004 Tsunami.
In addition, Jennifer Chang (GSS ’08), received alternate status for a scholarship to Taiwan for a project, “Social Work, Counseling, and Culture in Taiwan.”
Another Fordham alumnus, Hillel Bavli (LAW ’06) applying as an “at-large candidate,” won a Fulbright to study quantum game theory at Hebrew University in Israel.
