August 6, 2019
K-State welcomes Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board to campus
K-State First Lady Mary Jo Myers and the Wildcat community welcomed members of the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, appointed by the U.S. president, to campus for its quarterly board meeting last week.
While on campus, the board met with approximately 40 Fulbright participants and alumni students from more than 30 countries. Jeff Bleich, Fulbright Board chair ambassador, addressed the students and teachers and encouraged them to do three things: "bring the best version of yourselves on your exchange, look for the best in others in everything you do, and pay it forward to future generations of Fulbrighters."
Grant Chapman, associate provost in the Office of International Programs and Fulbright participant, noted that since 2013, the K-State community has demonstrated a strong commitment to international exchange, including producing 10 participants to the U.S. student program, hosting more than 40 foreign student participants, and hosting 15 U.S. and foreign scholars.
This summer, K-State is hosting two Fulbright cohorts. One group of Fulbright students is spending three weeks at K-State to hone their English skills and become oriented to life at American universities. Following their orientation, they will head to the start of the fall semester at universities across the country to begin their master's and doctoral programs at other U.S. institutions.
K-State also is hosting 40 public school English teachers from Brazil who are participating in a six-week program to improve their English skills and teaching methodologies.
During the meeting with the Fulbright Board, K-State staff and faculty served as panelists and presented information about internationalization initiatives at the university. Charles Taber, provost and executive vice president, begin the meeting with a warm welcome to members of the Fulbright Board and provided an overview of university priorities. Next, the board heard a presentation on K-State Australia Initiatives, or Oz to Oz, moderated by John Leslie, university distinguished professor of plant pathology and Fulbright alumnus, which is a bilateral exchange program for faculty from K-State and Australian institutions.
The board also heard the powerful personal narratives of a panel of visiting Fulbright students. After the meeting, staff from the Office of International Programs and the Fulbright Board traveled to Lawrence to join a group of 230 outgoing U.S. Fulbright students participating in an orientation at the University of Kansas ahead of their overseas exchanges throughout Europe.
Both university visits enabled the distinguished members of the Fulbright Scholarship Board to see Kansas' two premier institutions of higher learning. For more information about the international exchanges and the Fulbright Program, visit exchanges.state.gov.