2014 Fulbright winners: Seniors Mollie Friedlander, Yoni Held, Sam King, Duncan Taylor, Megan Massa and Viola Rothschild
With Fulbright grants that support a year of work or travel abroad, two seniors will travel to China and Germany to pursue research projects, while four others will head to far-off destinations to teach English.
Each year, the Fulbright U.S. Student Program provides highly competitive grants to promising students to foster international exchanges.
The two seniors who have received Fulbright study/research grants are Megan Massa ’14 and Viola Rothschild ’14.
Last year, ten Bowdoin students were awarded Fulbright fellowships—five English Teaching Assistantships and five Study/Research Grants. We wanted to find out what they’re up to on their year abroad. Writing from balconies in Turkey, bars in Italy, and organic farms in Sri Lanka, they gave us some insight on what life as a Fulbrighter is really like.
Rothschild plans to study the African diaspora in China and how the local governments in Yiwu and Guangzhou — the two Chinese cities with the largest African populations — are responding to the influx of African immigrants.
Massa will work in a lab at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Germany to study the neuroprotective effects of testosterone, a sex steroid hormone, on MS patient-derived primary neurons.
The 2014 Bowdoin Fulbright students who received English Teaching Assistantships are Mollie Friedlander ’14; Jonathan “Yoni” Held ’14; Samuel King ’14; and Duncan Taylor ’14.
Along with her English teaching duties, Friedlander says she will volunteer in one of 25 hospitals and medical clinics in Madrid, Spain.
Held says he will not just teach English in Bangladesh but also offer place-based environmental education, such as implementing small-scale sustainability projects.
During his time in Sri Lanka, King says he will join a cricket league as well as teach English.
Taylor says he chose to teach English in Panama because he shares the national love of baseball and the country’s strong economic ties to the United States. Besides teaching English, he wants to open a baseball camp for children.
