NDSU has been notified of three recipients of Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Scholarships. It is the most the university has ever been awarded during one cycle.
The Fulbright English Teaching Assistants program places recent college graduates and young professionals as English teaching assistants in primary and secondary schools or universities in other countries. Recipients of Fulbright grants are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields.
The recipients include two soon-to-graduate seniors – Emily Grenz, who will be an instructor in Turkey; and Katherine Thoreson, who will teach in Belgium – along with recent NDSU alumna Annie Erling Gofus, who will work in the Slovak Republic.
“There have been seven NDSU students who have received Fulbright awards since 1999. It is a highly competitive award, and three awards speaks highly to the caliber of our students,” said Lisa Hauck, NDSU director of global outreach.
Grenz is excited to return to Turkey. She spent two months there each summer in 2012 and 2013 through a Critical Language Scholarship from the U.S. Department of State. Grenz will be assigned to one of approximately 30 universities for nine months beginning in September. She said she will likely be asked to establish an English education program as Turkey recently raised its higher education English language requirements.
Grenz is a double major in English education and history from Eureka, South Dakota. “It’s the accomplishment I’m most proud of to date,” Grenz said of the Fulbright award. “It affirms the belief I have in myself.”
Thoreson will teach conversational English at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Brussels for nine months starting in September. She is a double major in English and philosophy and an honors student. Thoreson grew up on a farm near Buxton, North Dakota, and attended May-Port CG High School.
“I’ve lived in North Dakota my entire life, so I’m excited to go a different country and see how things are done there,” she said. “That should be a rewarding experience.”
Eager to explore Europe and live in a different culture, Thoreson is delighted to be among three Fulbright recipients from NDSU. “NDSU has really prepared me very well for the kind of things I’ll be doing over there,” she said. “I’ve been involved in English Conversational Circle since I started here, and that experience really helped me out a lot. I’m glad NDSU is getting this type of exposure, because it will help other people who go here do similarly cool things.”
The English Conversational Circle is sponsored by the NDSU English club and provides opportunities for cross-cultural conversations among students.
Erling Gofus, BA ’09, history, will be an English teaching assistant in the Slovak Republic of Bratislava. The native of Bismarck, North Dakota, said she is slated to teach a class of high school students for about 15 hours per week for 10 months beginning in August. In addition, she hopes to host creative writing workshops to help students develop English writing skills.
“I’m very interested in oral history and telling stories about different cultures,” said Erling Gofus, who is a freelance writer living near Philadelphia. “I plan on exploring Slovakia, writing, taking a lot of pictures and talking to the people. I want to take everything in.”
Erling Gofus has worked in the office of former U.S. Sen. Byron Dorgan and at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
The Fulbright Program is considered the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government. It is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. The primary source of funding for the Fulbright Program is an annual appropriation made by Congress to the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. The program operates in more than 155 countries worldwide.
NDSU is recognized as one of the nation's top 108 public and private universities by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.