Six students from Johns Hopkins have been awarded the
opportunity to study abroad during the 2006-2007 academic
year, thanks to two prestigious awards administered by the
Institute of International Education.
Three graduating seniors and two graduate students
will study abroad as Fulbright Scholars. A third graduate
student earned a scholarship known as the DAAD from the
German Academic Exchange Service.
The programs typically attract the same applicants, so
the administrators work closely together on many issues,
most notably to avoid giving grants to the same people,
according to John Bader, associate dean for academic
programs and advising in the Krieger School.
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 publicly funded independent
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.
Five students have been named Fulbright scholars.
Warner Brown, 22, will travel to Shanghai,
called the "City of the Future," to study how the city's
civic identity is represented in visual culture. Brown will
examine the advertising and package and product design
displayed in the city and will then assess how advertisers
tailor commercial art to localized taste and culture. The
Fulbright grant will allow Brown to continue research he
began last summer in Shanghai with the aid of a Provost's
Undergraduate Research Award. His research was also
supported by a $1,200 Summer Travel Grant from the
Institute for Global Studies in Culture, Power and History
at Johns Hopkins. Brown plans to continue research of
Shanghai in graduate school. He will receive his bachelor's
degree in history next week.
Teresa Cribelli, 36, who is pursuing a
doctorate in Latin American history, will travel to Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil, to study how Brazilians from 1850 to 1889
conceived of modernization in terms of their own unique
needs and circumstances. Cribelli will study 19th-century
newspapers, reports on public work projects and government
documents at institutions that include Brazil's National
Library and National Archives. She also will work with
Brazilian historians "to open a path to a shared
reconsideration of Brazil's past," she said. Cribelli
earned her bachelor's degree at the University of Colorado
at Denver and her master's degree at the University of New
Mexico.
Irene Kim, 22, will travel in July to South
Korea on a one-year teaching assistantship in English as a
foreign language. The scholarship will allow Kim a chance
to satisfy both her passion for teaching and her desire as
a first-generation Korean-American for a deeper
appreciation and understanding of her family's culture. Kim
says her prior teaching experiences as a resident adviser,
academic tutor in biology and writing, and a General
Education Development certification tutor in the Baltimore
City Detention Center will serve her well as a Fulbright
scholar. After her return from South Korea, Kim plans to
enroll in medical school to pursue her career goals as a
physician and professor. Kim will receive a bachelor's
degree in molecular and cellular biology next week.
Caitlin Kunkel, 21, will travel to Indonesia to
teach English to Indonesian high school students. As an
aspiring writer, Kunkel also plans to speak with survivors
of the devastating December 2004 tsunami and write about
their experiences. Kunkel will receive a bachelor's degree
in Writing Seminars next week and, upon her return from
Indonesia, she plans to pursue a master of fine arts degree
in creative writing.
Patrick Leland, 33, is a doctoral candidate in
philosophy who will travel to Germany to study the
contributions of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant to
recent philosophical accounts of linguistic meaning. Many
philosophers over the past century have asserted that the
meanings of words depend on how people use those words in
speech. Leland believes Kant's contributions to this
account of meaning have gone largely unrecognized. He will
travel to Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitat in Frankfurt
am Main, Germany, to research and consult German scholars
and archive materials in his studies. A graduate of
Carson-Newman College, Leland holds two master's degrees in
philosophy, from Northern Illinois University and Johns
Hopkins. (Leland also earned a DAAD scholarship but
declined it in order to pursue his studies through the
Fulbright program.)
Annemarie Catania, 30, will be headed to
Marburg, Germany, for six months with a DAAD scholarship.
She will further her doctoral dissertation in the Classics
Department analyzing the imagery on Roman sarcophagi. Using
the photo archive at the Sarkophag-Corpus, Catania will
study the scenes of festive processions and banquets carved
or sculpted into marble coffins. Though Catania says there
is an ongoing scholarly debate about whether to read
religious significance into the symbolism used in the
elaborate carvings, she is approaching the sarcophagi from
another angle, choosing instead to examine the connection
between revelry and death that is reflected throughout
ancient Roman society. A graduate of St. John's College,
Catania holds a bachelor's degree in liberal arts. She
anticipates earning her doctoral degree from Johns Hopkins
in fall 2007.
Christopher Kovalchick, 22, also won a
Fulbright scholarship to study in Germany but declined the
award in favor of a full fellowship for graduate study in
aeronautics at the California Institute of Technology.
According to the Academic Advising Office, Kovalchick also
was awarded a National Defense Science and Engineering
Graduate Fellowship from the Department of Defense.
Kovalchick will receive a degree in engineering mechanics
from the Whiting School of Engineering and a degree in
violin performance from the Peabody Institute next week.