Four Broncos won Fulbright grants to teach or study abroad. That makes SCU a Fulbright “Top Producer.”
Change the world? First you need to identify problems beyond your immediate perspective—then look within to find the solution. This year, four recent grads from Santa Clara University head overseas with prestigious Fulbright fellowships, building on their experiences studying on campus and internationally to solve problems facing the world community.
SEAN REILLY ’16 (top left) is on the trail of the pond apple in Queensland, Australia. This bio invader, native to West Africa and tropical parts of the Americas, isn’t your typical predator. It doesn’t have teeth or claws but can wipe out plant species by forming dense stands and replacing native ecosystems. Reilly will assist Aborigine rangers in managing the maintenance of pond apples. Reilly’s interest in the environment started as recreation but evolved into activism when he learned in high school that “everything wasn’t hunky-dory in the world.” Until his semester starts in Australia, Reilly will help assistant professor Hari Mix research water and atmospheric rivers.
CLARA CUSHING ’16 (top right) can’t wait to use To Kill a Mockingbird to teach students in the Czech Republic about social struggles in the United States. Or introduce them to California’s culture through John Steinbeck. Helping non-native speakers with English is not new to Cushing, who has worked at the HUB writing center as an ESL tutor for three years. After taking Spanish, Italian, Latin, Homeric Greek, and German, Cushing is now tackling the grammatical and pronunciation adventures of Czech as she prepares to teach English in a small town outside Prague. With relatives from the Czech Republic and Northern Germany, she looks forward to exploring her roots.
LINDSEY ALLEN ’16 (bottom right) has seen entrepreneurship spur change firsthand. As a Global Social Benefit Fellow, Allen spent time in Tanzania and Uganda, traveling to 15 villages to investigate the social impact of Solar Sister, a clean-energy women’s empowerment enterprise. As a Fulbright Fellow in Morocco, Allen will dig into grassroots work to bridge that gap between policymakers and civic society, helping groups like Solar Sister thrive. A Chicago native, Allen studied political science at SCU. After her Fulbright, Allen intends to pursue secondary education—an MBA, perhaps, that will place her right in the intersection of on-the-ground work and policymaking.
STEPHANIE GOODMAN ’15 (bottom left) was working as an emergency medical technician in Kumsai, Ghana, when a boy named Kwame was brought into her NGO with severe brain trauma. His school had collapsed. Without insurance, Kwame’s family did not have enough money to pay for life-saving surgery and he did not survive. Goodman returns to Ghana this semester determined to prevent situations like Kwame’s from happening again. She will examine rates and barriers to enrollment in the National Health Insurance Scheme and the effect of insurance on outcomes. “I hope to spread the word through local NGOs, government officials, and physicians,” Goodman says.