Students and Alumni Named Fulbright Scholars

Five Dartmouth students and two recent alumni have been selected as Fulbright Scholars and will study or teach in Spain, the United Kingdom, Hungary, South Korea, and Cambodia.

Sponsored by the U.S. government, the Fulbright Program is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other nations through international educational exchanges in more than 155 countries. Fulbright awards are available for research, graduate study, and teaching English.

"This year's Fulbright recipients represent humanities, arts, social sciences, sciences, and teaching—and highlight the fact that Fulbright can be right for you no matter what your discipline or interests might be," says Associate Director of Undergraduate Advising and Research Holly Taylor, who advises Dartmouth students and alumni through the Fulbright application process.

To learn more about how to apply for the Fulbright and other programs, visit Dartmouth's Fellowship Advising Office.

Gabrielle Bozarth '17

St. Marys, Ga.
Government and women's, gender, and sexuality studies double major; African and African American studies minor
Research/study grant, UK

Through Fulbright, Gabrielle Bozarth will earn a master's in social science research methods at Cardiff University, looking at how Welsh women are affected by incarceration in the U.K. "There's this dynamic where there are men's prisons popping up in Wales, but no women's prison, so women are being exported to England, whereas Englishmen are being exported to Wales," she says.

It's an issue she learned about while trying to stay informed about U.S. news during a foreign study program in Fez, Morocco. "It was the height of the Black Lives Matter movement in the U.S., and the best way to stay up to date abroad was through Google alerts. Through that I got news about other areas of the world, and I started following what was happening with prisons in the UK."

A course on "Ethnographies of Violence" led to a thesis on Maryland State Police Department reporting procedures using data gathered from filing Freedom of Information Act requests—a process that showed her "how much I love research," she says. Following her Fulbright, she will pursue a combined JD-PhD in political science at the University of Chicago.

Bozarth was a member of Dartmouth's Student and Presidential Committee on Sexual Assault (SPCSA), held several positions in the Afro-American Society, served on the Collis governing board, and worked in the Office of Pluralism and Leadership, in addition to serving as vice president of her sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, and working in dining services. "I was involved with concerned students who wanted to change campus," she says.

Since graduating, she has worked as a legal assistant with the law firm White & Case LLP in Washington, D.C., advocating for prisoners in solitary confinement. "Working directly with people who've been affected by the prison industry in the U.S. is part of what inspired me to learn more about the prison industrial complex in the U.K.," she says.

Ashley DuPuis '19

Damascus, Ore.
History major; public policy minor
Research/study grant, Hungary

Ashley DuPuis has broad interests—her history thesis examines Oregon's eugenics movement, she spent the summer in India researching caste and gender discrimination, and as a presidential scholar she worked with Professor Darrin McMahon, investigating the evolution of ideas of equality in Western thought. "The common thread has been civil and human rights on a national and international scale—how actors operate within systems of oppression and privilege, and how groups are perceived and treated by others and vice versa," she says.

She's also passionate about public policy and international relations. Through Fulbright, she'll be working with Antall József Knowledge Centre, a think-tank associated with Corvinus University of Budapest. "I'll be taking courses in Hungarian and doing research into migration and asylum policy in the Visegrád Four"—Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia—"looking at the political and legal history of those four countries and the implications of their policies in relation to the European Union," as well as helping to edit the center's English-language publications, she says.

She feels prepared for this in part because of her experience with the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy, through which she is a public policy minor and a Rockefeller Leadership Fellow, among other activities. Last fall, with students in her course on global policy leadership she traveled to Colombia to learn firsthand about the 2016 peace accords, an experience she calls "completely transformative."

A member of the national championship women's rugby team, DuPuis has also served as one of the athletics department's Jaeger Civic Interns, organizing volunteer activities for athletes. "That's had a big impact on how I view the ability of groups and individuals within a community to come together to serve others," she says.

Of receiving the Fulbright, she says, "It's an amazing honor, and I'm so thankful for all the support I've received at Dartmouth, and at home from my friends and family. It feels like peoples' investment in me over the years is paying off, and that's incredible."

Alyssa Loyless '17

Sacramento, Calif.
Anthropology major modified with geography; religion minor
Research/study grant, Cambodia

Alyssa Loyless' interest in Cambodian archaeological sites "attests to the power of networking with the Dartmouth community," she says—in this case, a connection with an alumna that created an opportunity for Loyless to work with the Cambodian Archaeological LIDAR Initiative (CALI Project) in Sambor Prei Kuk. The opportunity helped her "build relationships that will assist me when I return to Cambodia for the Fulbright in September," she says.

Loyless discovered a love for archaeology during her sophomore summer, when she traveled to Mexico with Professor of Anthropology Deborah Nichols to work on an excavation of Teotihuacan—an experience of first-hand research that inspired her to seek out more. This led her to a project with Professor Jesse Casana and the Syrian Heritage Initiative, using remote sensing and 3-D modeling to remotely track archaeological sites in Syria and Iraq that have been targets of looting. Seeking to improve her skills in GIS and remote sensing, she found a mentor in Jonathan Chipman, a senior lecturer in geography and director of the Citrin Family GIS/Applied Spatial Analysis Laboratory.

"My interactions with my professors at Dartmouth have been the biggest influence in how much I've grown to love my field of research," Loyless says. "I am forever grateful for the opportunities that those I've met through Dartmouth have given me."

Post-graduation, she went to Los Angeles, where she worked as an archaeological field technician for an engineering firm before moving to the U.K. to pursue a master's of science in archaeological information systems at the University of York. After her Fulbright, she plans to return to the U.S. to begin a PhD program in archaeological sciences.

"Receiving the Fulbright is an incredible honor and opportunity to continuing doing research that I love and am passionate about," she says. "Archaeology has presented me with amazing opportunities to travel the world and experience new cultures, and I'm excited to see where it will lead to next."

Bethany Malzman '19

Delray Beach, Fla.
Government major; Spanish minor
English teaching assistant grant, Spain

Bethany Malzman first went to Spain on a language study abroad program her sophomore summer, and loved the country so much she returned during an off term as a volunteer English teaching assistant.

"I enjoyed being in a different country and learning how culture and language go hand in hand," she says. Her junior summer, she was an education consultant and fellow with Teach for America, working with schools in New Mexico, Tennessee, and Chicago, an experience "that reaffirmed my interest in education."

Next year, she will be in Asturias, Spain, teaching English through Fulbright—a program that combines her love of Spanish language, culture, and education. "When I heard about Fulbright, I knew this was something I wanted to do," she says.

Of her Dartmouth experience, she says, "I've taken courses in almost every department on campus—I didn't declare my major until the last minute because with every course I was challenged in a different way to think about the world."

A first-generation college student, she's mentored younger students through the First-Year Student Enrichment Program (FYSEP) and works with the first-generation advising office through the Office of Pluralism and Leadership. "That's part of my identity that I feel really strongly about," she says. 

She's also a Spanish tutor and a communications assistant at the Rockefeller Center. With support from the center, she interned on Capitol Hill in the office Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Of receiving the Fulbright, she says she hopes to be a "cultural ambassador to students there, and to bring back everything I learn."

Victoria McCraven '19

Cheshire, Conn.
Geography major; art history minor
Research/study grant, UK

In her first year at Dartmouth, Victoria McCraven became interested in the American Colonization Society, a 19th-century movement to establish a colony of free African Americans in Liberia. Through courses and a summer internship at the Amistad Center for Art and Culture in Hartford, Conn., she learned about the work of Augustus Washington, class of 1847—a prominent African American photographer who was part of this movement.

Through Fulbright, she plans to earn a master's degree in art history at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, where she'll focus on West African photography, particularly how westernized black people like Washington portrayed Liberian society.

"I ultimately want to study African American art history and visual culture, but there is something so crucial about understanding the relationship between the African continent and the transatlantic slave trade," she says. Long-term, she hopes to become a museum curator "and build foundations so that I can one day open my own black arts center or incubator."

At Dartmouth, McCraven is the Homma Family Intern at the Hood Museum of Art, a co-editor-in-chief of The Aegis yearbook, and a co-founder of the student group D-Step. She studied abroad twice, on the Spanish language study abroad program in Spain and on the geography department's foreign study program in the Czech Republic.

"I knew spending time abroad was something I wanted to do after college. The Fulbright will allow me to do that and make lasting connections I'll need later on," she says. "I'm excited to meet people in some of the art communities that I'm interested in and to be able to share things that are culturally specific to me, like step, with people in the UK."

Arista Ngodinh '19

Marana, Ariz.
Linguistics major modified with Asian and Middle Eastern studies
English teaching assistant grant, South Korea

Arista Ngodinh says the opportunity to teach English in South Korea through Fulbright next year "puts all my interests together"—particularly an interest in education and language, and in the language and culture of Korea, where she spent her junior fall as an exchange student at Seoul's Yonsei University.

Growing up bilingual in Vietnamese and English, she is fascinated by language. In high school she studied Mandarin and learned some Korean from friends and pop-culture, and at Dartmouth, she decided to major in linguistics. "Linguistics is about analyzing the underlying principles most languages share," she says. "It combined my interest data analysis and the humanities."

Ngodinh discovered her interest in education in a course with Associate Professor of Education Michele Tine. "We learned about the neuroscience of learning, methods of teaching, and the education system in the U.S. and other countries," she says. "From that point on I was interested in trying to understand how people learn and how we can help students learn better."

The First Year Student Enrichment Program (FYSEP) was key to her transition to college, and the experience motivated her to help others. She served as a mentor to high school students through the Summer Enrichment at Dartmouth (SEAD) program and tutored local elementary school students through America Reads. "I like interacting with students. SEAD solidified a lot of the things that I learned in my education classes—especially that if you support students, they will show results."

Outside of the classroom, Ngodinh is a member of the dance group Street Soul, which she joined during her first year. "I had never danced before, and it became the catalyst for so much of my Dartmouth experience," she says. "I carried the confidence I got from dancing into my classes."

Neerja Thakkar '19

Saint Paul, Minn.
Computer science and mathematics double major
Research/study grant, Spain

Neerja Thakkar discovered computer science in the fall of her first year when she took "CS 1." "I fell in love with how you can take a problem and break it down and figure out how to write code to solve it," she says. "I liked the mathematical aspect and how it has so many real-world applications."

A course on computational photography introduced her to visual computing, which led to an internship at Facebook and her senior thesis, on rendering synthetic data for deep learning and computer vision tasks. She has also served as a teaching assistant for several CS classes. "Being a TA has been a good experience because when I have to teach something to someone else I learn it much better myself. It's fun to show other people why I think computer science is so cool."

Outside of the classroom, Thakkar plays violin in the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra and served as outreach chair for the Student and Presidential Committee on Sexual Assault. She's also mentored other women in computer science and STEM. "Other women at Dartmouth definitely encouraged me," she says. "Having someone tell you you should believe in yourself is really important."

Through Fulbright, she'll continue her research in the computational imaging lab at Universidad de Universidad de Zaragoza in Spain. "In computer science there's a huge benefit to collaborative research across different countries. It's a field where research has a lot of ethical implications, so having more global awareness and a broader perspective will be really valuable."

After Fulbright, she plans to begin a PhD program in computer science at the University of California, Berkeley.

Hannah Silverstein can be reached at hannah.silverstein@dartmouth.edu.

Editor's note: This story was updated on May 15 to recognize Alyssa Loyless '17, who has received a Fulbright Scholarship to conduct research in Cambodia.