Two Recent Ithaca College Grads Win Fulbright Grants
ITHACA, NY — Ithaca College graduates Katerina Leinhart and Emily Brown have been awarded Fulbright scholarships to study and teach abroad. Leinhart graduated magna cum laude from the college in 2011 with a bachelor’s in politics, and Brown graduated cum laude in May 2012 with a bachelor’s in English and sociology.
Leinhart has been awarded a research grant to Morocco, where she will study the sacred music of the Gnawa people and explore how processes of globalization have transformed it from ritual to market contexts. Leinhart will analyze ritual and performance through participant observation, interviews and sound recording. After returning from Morocco, she plans to earn a master’s degree in performance studies and eventually pursue a doctorate in ethnomusicology.
Brown has been awarded an English teaching assistantship to Slovakia, where she will assist in an English language classroom. She will also spend part of her time researching the juvenile justice system in Slovakia. She spent a semester in New Zealand during her junior year studying that country’s juvenile justice system and plans to use the research from these comparative projects as the basis of future graduate school study.
Created by Congress in 1946 and sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, the Fulbright program offers competitive, merit-based grants to foster mutual understanding among nations through educational and cultural exchanges. Awarding 1,800 grants annually, the Fulbright Student Program supports study and research in more than 155 countries.
Ithaca College applicants for student Fulbright grants are extensively mentored, beginning with outreach efforts to talented students encouraging them to learn about the program and confirm their commitment. In 2006, the “Chronicle of Higher Education” cited Ithaca College as one of the top producers of Fulbright recipients for the 2006-7 academic year. In the six years since then, students and young alumni from Ithaca College have been awarded 10 Fulbrights to countries that include Bulgaria, Bangladesh, Germany, Czech Republic, Korea, China, Spain and Poland.
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