Scholarships Announced at Calvin College

Two Calvin College professors— one a geographer and the other a philosopher — and one Calvin senior in the honors program have been awarded prestigious Fulbright Scholarships for the 2009-2010 academic year to do research in their areas of interest.

Meanwhile, five Calvin students have been named recipients of a much-sought Goldwater Scholarship from the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation. They are the largest contingent of Goldwater Scholars ever to study at Calvin. Typically, Calvin has one or two Goldwater Scholars, but this year all applicants were accepted. Luke Leisman, Alexandra Cok, Sarah Tasker, Tim Ferdinands, Melissa Haegert are this year’s winners.

The Fulbright Scholars Program offers the most highly coveted awards in academia. The program was established by Congress in 1946 with the aim "to increase mutual understanding between the peoples of the United States and other countries, through the exchange of persons, knowledge and skills."

The Fulbright winners are Janel Curry, a geography professor, David Hoekema, a philosophy professor, and a Calvin senior, Eric Bratt. Each will be awarded stipends to cover a range of costs.

Curry also was a Fulbright Scholar in the summer of 1995. She will be based at City University of Hong Kong. She will work with four other American professors to transition Hong Kong universities from three-year to four-year undergraduate degree-offering institutions.

Hoekema will spend a semester teaching and researching African political philosophies from his base at Daystar University in Kenya, assessing the new politics that motivated the founding of new African nations 50 years ago.

Bratt will study and do research in a Chinese village in Manchuria where the last speakers of the Manchu language live. He will be based at Heilongjiang University's Manchu Language and Cultural Research Center. He will begin his study of Mandarin in July.

"I've found cultural exchange to be one of the most rewarding components of spending time abroad," said Bratt, a Grand Rapids native, who majored, and honored, in German, History and Asian Studies. "Even the simplest of conversations with an individual from a foreign culture can impact the way we see the world. Spending time abroad has made that abundantly clear."

The Fulbright Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, is the U.S. government’s flagship international exchange program and is supported by the people of the United States and partner countries around the world. For more information, visit fulbright.state.gov. The Fulbright Scholar Program is administered by CIES, a division of the Institute of International Education.

To read the entire story on the winners of the Fulbright Scholarships, visit: http://www.calvin.edu/news/2008-09/fulbright/.

To read the entire story on the winners of Goldwater Scholarships, visit: http://www.calvin.edu/news/2008-09/goldwater-scholars/.