Headlines at Hopkins: news releases from across
the 
university Headlines
@Hopkins
News by Topic: news releases organized by
subject News by Topic
News by School: news releases organized by the 
university's 9 schools & divisions News by School
Events Open to the Public (campus-wide) Events Open
to the Public
Blue Jay Sports: Hopkins Athletic Center Blue Jay Sports
Search News Site Search the Site

Contacting the News Staff: directory of
university 
press officers Contacting
News Staff
Receive News Via Email (listservs) Receive News
Via Email
Resources for Journalists Resources for Journalists

Virtually Live@Hopkins: audio and video news Virtually
Live@Hopkins
Hopkins in the News: news clips about Hopkins Hopkins in
the News

Faculty Experts: searchable resource organized by 
topic Faculty Experts
Faculty and Administrator Photos Faculty and
Administrator
Photos
Faculty with Homepages Faculty with Homepages

JHUNIVERSE Homepage JHUniverse Homepage
Headlines at Hopkins
News Release

Office of News and Information
Johns Hopkins University
901 South Bond Street, Suite 540
Baltimore, Maryland 21231
Phone: 443-287-9960 | Fax: 443-287-9898

May 21, 2004
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Amy Cowles
amycowles@jhu.edu
443-287-9904


Johns Hopkins Grads to Study Abroad as
Fulbright, DAAD Scholars

Nine off to India, Malaysia, Egypt and more

Nine students or alumni of The Johns Hopkins University have learned they will be headed abroad for the 2004-2005 academic year, thanks to two prestigious awards administered by the Institute of International Education.

Three undergraduates and four graduate students received Fulbright Scholar grants that will take them to locales including India, Malaysia, Egypt and Germany. Two graduate students in the History of Art Department are also headed to Germany, having each earned a scholarship known as the DAAD from the German Academic Exchange Service, funded by the German government.

The programs typically attract the same applicants, so they work closely together on many issues, most notably to avoid giving grants to the same people, according to John Bader, assistant dean and director of the Office of Academic Advising in the university's Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

Bader, a former Fulbright scholar who traveled to India and now helps Johns Hopkins students apply for such awards, said, "I cannot help the pride I feel for these students and for Hopkins faculty who have prepared such remarkable people for an extraordinary experience."

Created in 1946, the Fulbright Program aims to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries through the exchange of people, knowledge and skills. The program awards approximately 1,000 grants annually and currently operates in more than 140 countries. Successful U.S. applicants utilize their grants to undertake self-designed programs in a broad range of disciplines including the social sciences, business, communication, performing arts, physical sciences, engineering and education.

DAAD, which stands for Deutscher Akademischer Austausch-dienst, is a private, publicly funded, self-governing organization of higher education institutions in Germany. The association promotes international academic relations and cooperation by offering mobility programs primarily for students and faculty but also for administrators and others in the higher education realm.

Seven students have been named Fulbright scholars.

Sally McGrane, 29, earned a master's degree from the Writing Seminars in 2003 and will travel to Germany to deepen her understanding of the country and its literary traditions. McGrane is a journalist whose pieces have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times, which has published nearly 30 of her articles about technology, business and travel.

Barkha Gurbani, 21, is a senior who received her bachelor's degree in public health on May 20. Graduating with Phi Beta Kappa honors, Barkha will be a Fulbright Scholar to India, the second consecutive year Johns Hopkins has sent a graduating senior to that country on a Fulbright. She will conduct research at the AIDS Research and Control Center in Mumbai and complete a public service project for women widowed by AIDS. Gurbani completed a minor in Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies and wrote her senior thesis about the feminization of the AIDS epidemic.

Jacquelyn Williamson, 31, is a graduate student in the Near Eastern Studies Department working with professors Betsy Bryan and Richard Jasnow. She will use the Fulbright grant to Egypt to examine an unstudied artistic motif in ancient Egyptian art in museums and on important archaeological sites. Fulbright awards are rarely granted to Egyptologists.

Ami Karnik, 21, is a graduating senior who earned a bachelor's degree in international studies. She will use her Fulbright to travel to Malaysia to study the integration of the ASEAN common market using the Malaysian electronics industry as a case study. She is the founder of the Hopkins Diplomat, the first undergraduate journal on international affairs. She has worked in the Maryland governor's office and conducted independent research in India, where she was born. Karnik also studied abroad at the university's campus in Bologna, Italy.

Emily Stecker, 21, is a graduating senior who majored in English. She won a Fulbright to teach English in South Korea but has declined it in favor of Princeton in Asia, a program run through Princeton University. She will be teaching English at Universiti Sains Malaysia in Penang, Malaysia. She is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society and has been a tutor at the university's Writing Center. Stecker is an accomplished violinist who played with the Hopkins Symphony Orchestra, winning its Shriver Hall Award this year. She has also played at Tanglewood and Interlochen and in the Czech Republic. She is building on her international experience of teaching at St. Agnes School in South Africa and will conduct a side project on indigenous instruments.

Edward W. Monroe Jr., 33, this year earned a master's degree in science and math education from the university's School of Professional Studies in Business and Education. He will use his Fulbright grant to travel to Bulgaria to pursue environmental studies. It will be a return trip for Monroe, a science teacher at the Washington Math Science Technology Public Charter High School in Washington, D.C. He was a Peace Corps volunteer in Bulgaria from 1995 to 1997. He plans to create a field guide for high school students on the geology and history of stone structures.

Jill M. Pederson, 32, will travel to Italy to explore the relationship between painting and poetry in the court of Milan from 1480 to 1499. Pederson, who earned a bachelor's degree from Colorado College and a master's from George Washington University, is a doctoral candidate in the History of Art Department at Johns Hopkins.

The two DAAD scholars traveling to Germany are Lynette Roth and Amanda Hockensmith.

Roth will study controversial realists in German art in the period of 1918 to 1933. A doctoral candidate in History of Art with a bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan, she will travel to Cologne and focus on the Cologne Progressives and their association with photographer August Sander.

Hockensmith, 29, will study the dadaist Kurt Schwitters, his multimedia art and the economic conditions of post-World War I Hanover. She is a doctoral candidate in the History of Art Department and received her bachelor's degree from Williams College.

For more information on the Fulbright and DAAD programs, go to www.iie.org (for Fulbright) or www.daad.org/about/daad.htm (for DAAD).


Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/
   Information on automatic e-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.


Go to Headlines@HopkinsHome Page