Three recent Hope College graduates have received recognition through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.
Brianna Dotson and Natalie Weg have each received English teaching assistantships, and Michaela Stock has received semi-finalist recognition.
Dotson, who graduated in May 2019, will teach in a K-12 setting in rural Thailand during the 2021-22 academic year. She had previously held a Fulbright English teaching assistantship during 2019-20, serving in a high school in the Czech Republic until leaving last March due to the pandemic. She has since been a K-8 ELL (English Language Learners) teacher and K-3 support specialist with Honey Creek Community School in Ann Arbor. At Hope she majored in education with a K-8 emphasis and minored in early childhood education and teaching English as a second language. She also spent the spring 2018 semester at Liverpool Hope University in England.
Weg, who graduated in the fall of 2020, will teach in South Korea during the 2022 calendar year, in a placement to be determined. At Hope she majored in English and global studies, and minored in French, and she has taught English as a Second Language (ESL). She spent the first part of the spring 2020 semester studying abroad in Nantes, France, returning to the U.S. in mid-March of that year due to the pandemic.
Stock, who graduated in May 2020, was recognized as a semifinalist for a study/research award to the United Kingdom (the Fulbright/Northumbria University Award in Art and Design). She crafted a composite major in recording arts media marketing, and minored in French-speaking culture and society, and art history. As a student she also studied abroad in Paris, France.
Since 2008, more than 30 Hope students or recent graduates have received awards, and several others have been named alternates or semi-finalists. Weg and Stock both began their applications as Hope students in the spring of 2020 and completed them that fall, and were mentored through the process by Dr. Janis Gibbs, associate professor of history; Dr. Stephen Maiullo, associate professor of classics; and Dr. Stephen Remillard, associate professor of physics. Dotson applied for her new fellowship independently as an at-large candidate, but had been mentored by Gibbs and Maiullo while applying for her first award.
Established in 1946, the Fulbright U.S. Student Program is the largest U.S. exchange program offering opportunities for students and young professionals to undertake international graduate study, advanced research, university teaching, and primary and secondary school teaching worldwide. The program currently awards approximately 2,000 grants annually in all fields of study, and operates in more than 140 countries worldwide.