Farming is in the blood of Marisa Rudolph ’18, a descendent of North Dakota homesteaders. Still, growing up in Fort Collins, Colorado, she thought it antiquated and uninteresting. That is, until she didn’t. A summer on an organic farm in southern Colorado and working with Professor Chris Bacon gave her a connection to her farming roots. That will come in handy as she studies efficiencies in farming on a Fulbright to Ghana. Rudolph’s first connection to Ghana came through a Global Social Benefit Fellowship there. On that trip, she did research with a company providing services to farmers. Through that she gained the confidence to apply for a Fulbright. “Getting a Fulbright was not something I would ever, ever have been able to do by myself,” Rudolph says. While at SCU, Rudolph ran for the cross-country team, dedicated herself to a variety of academic pursuits, and helped lead the Food and Agribusiness Institute’s food waste initiative, speaking at various food issues forums. She is interested in gender disparities in agriculture, and says that gap remains stagnant in West Africa despite the overall improvement of livelihoods over the past 50 years.

Flash in the Dark It was an offhand remark from a teacher in India during her Global Fellows Internship that sparked interest in off-the-grid villages for Ericka Francks ’17. “On stormy days kids can’t see the blackboard,” the teacher said, “so they don’t even come to school.” The village didn’t have electricity. Learning couldn’t happen in the dark. Now Francks is going to study lighting up villages in the African nation of Lesotho, with research funded by her Fulbright. Her life experiences, Francks says, “all just kind of built on each other.” While in Lesotho, she will partner to pilot a program offering business training and infrastructure to rural solar power users.

Empowered Support Vice President at Silicon Valley Bank and marketing major Katrina Van Gasse ’14 will travel to Fiji to study barriers to women-led microenterprises on a Fulbright. She credits SCU for giving her perspective in life, as well as giving her the confidence and drive to earn a Fulbright: “Perspective of what matters to my core—how complex, beautiful, fragile, and resilient this world is, and that living with purpose is important,” she says. As a student, she was “trying to figure out life,” but the opportunities she found at SCU made her feel like she “actually had something valuable to contribute,” which was extremely empowering. 

Follow the Sun Before coming to SCU, economics major Carson Whisler ’17 had barely left his hometown of Astoria, Oregon. This past year found him working in India as a Data for Impact fellow at SocialCops. And he’s not done traveling. He received a Fulbright to research “pay-as-you-go” solar technologies in Indonesia. While interviewing the sarpanch (similar to a mayor) of a village in India, Whisler learned electricity is about more than just power. For example, snake bites. “A few people actually died because snakes had basically gone in their houses and bit them, and they weren’t able to see them or fend them off with a stick or anything like that.”

Wordly Tenacity After being an alternate for a Fulbright grant in 2017, Lauren Cloward ’16 did not give up. She applied again. This year, she got the grant. Through it Cloward will conduct research on how agricultural decisions are made in Burkina Faso. Also a Rhodes scholarship finalist, Cloward double-majored in environmental studies and political science. “I feel so lucky to have found a second home in Santa Clara,” she says, “where those who have helped me define my path and whom I admire have also been my biggest advocates—and where I’ve learned the importance of tenacity in the face of our generation’s most pressing problems.”