New Fulbright Grant Brings Scientists to U.S.

Program aims to improve America’s ability to recruit foreign graduate students

Academics and federal officials alike have been wrestling for a while over how to improve the United States’ ability to recruit foreign graduate students in science and technology. Now officials at the Fulbright Program are putting money behind that mission with a new grant to bring international Ph.D. students to the United States.

This fall 29 students from 27 countries began graduate studies supported by a new International Fulbright Science and Technology Award. Each Ph.D. student will receive $160,000 in federal support for their studies, as well as a five-year student visa.

“Science and technology have always been a substantial part of Fulbright,” says Thomas A. Farrell, deputy assistant secretary for academic programs at the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which oversees the Fulbright Program. “But this new award is meant to send a signal about our desire to keep U.S. higher education at the pinnacle of research in these key fields.”

The science-and-technology Ph.D. award was in part a product of a January 2006 summit of higher-education and State Department officials and is meant to counter the perception of an unwelcoming United States that has been losing its ability to attract the brightest foreign students.

The new award is one of several categories of scholarships given through the Fulbright Program, which was established in 1946 and serves as America’s flagship international-exchange program. The federal government provided about $181-million in support for the 2007-8 Fulbright grants, according to Mr. Farrell.

In other areas of the Fulbright Program, officials continued an emphasis that began last year to increase recipients’ fluency in languages deemed critical for national security, like Mandarin and Arabic. A teaching-assistantship program that sends American students abroad to teach English was also expanded.

Mr. Farrell said Fulbright had tried to foster diversity among foreign applicants to U.S. programs by enabling some scholars to take intensive English courses. That way talented students from poor regions, who might be overlooked because they lack strong English skills, could attend graduate programs in the United States.

He said the effort to “move beyond the elites” with this plan, called Building the Fulbright Future, was gaining momentum.

As for the new science-and-technology Ph.D. program, Mr. Farrell said that American universities chipped in about $1.3-million, which allowed for four more awards to be granted, and that he hoped to have similar cooperation for future grants. His department has committed to awarding at least 40 international Ph.D. scholarships next year.

On these pages are profiles of two of this year’s recipients of the new science award, a look at the success of two California colleges in producing Fulbright students, and data on this year’s winners. Lists of this year’s Fulbright scholars from the United States and abroad are available on the Fulbright Web site (http://www.cies.org).

http://chronicle.com Section: International Volume 54, Issue 9, Page A42