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Three UB students win prestigious Fulbright Awards
Three UB students have received prestigious Fulbright Fellowships, the most recent class in what has become a UB tradition of multiple winners in the highly competitive, nationally recognized scholarly competition.
The three winners include two seniors who graduated this month and a graduate student.
Thawab Shibly, who has been known as a vocal and eloquent spokesperson for the rights of Palestinian refugees, graduated with a double major in political science and English, and a minor in art. She also received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Student Excellence.
Shibly was president of the campus Community Action Corps, led a bi-weekly discussion group for the Muslim Student Association and was a volunteer mentor at the Priscilla Project.
Born in Damascus and raised in Buffalo, Shibly is the recipient of the Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship, which will sponsor her for 20 hours a week of teaching in Jordan. She also will continue her oral history research of refugees living in Jordan.
A University Advanced Honors College scholar, she was on the Dean’s List for five semesters. Shibly also was the recipient of the J. Scott Fleming Scholarship for Leadership and Excellence, and has volunteered in the New Orleans recovery effort.
Karl Barber, an Albany native, graduated with a degree in chemical engineering and French. Barber was a Presidential Scholar at UB and chairman of the Society for Biological Engineers for UB’s chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE).
Barber has performed research in protein engineering since 2010 and currently is investigating the development of temperature sensitivity in a split mini intein. Last summer, he pursued an internship in neurobiology at University Laval in Quebec City, making use of a light-sensitive protein to study interneurons in the hippocampus of mice.
In 2011, he received the AIChE Outstanding Junior Award for the Western New York chapter. He also enjoys studying French-Canadian linguistics and culture.
Barber will use the Fulbright grant to study the molecular basis of the death of mutant photoreceptors in neurons at McGill University in Montreal. His work will have important implications in the study of inherited diseases related to retinal degeneration. Barber also plans to volunteer at a mental hospital to emphasize the human aspect of neuroscience.
Barber was a member of the Honors College at UB. He will study for his doctorate in molecular biology at Yale University after his Fulbright award in the fall of 2013.
Grace Mukupa, a graduate student pursing a PhD in global gender studies, will use the Fulbright award to explore the effect of food incentives as strategy for attracting and retaining young students in educational institutions in the Khatlon Province in Tajikistan. The project targets 81 elementary schools and 17 high schools located in a region that has endured brutalities of civil war and presently has high levels of disparity between boys’ and girls’ education.
Mukupa served as president of UB’s Graduate Student Association for 2011-12, in addition to advising three undergraduate organizations—the African Student Association, Pi Delta Psi fraternity and the UB Gospel Choir.
A native of Zambia who grew up in Tokyo, Mukupa integrated discussion on gender and disparities in southern Africa into her teaching of the undergraduate course “Gender in Africa and Gender and Traditional Laws in Africa.”
Since 2010, she has been serving as representative to the United Nations to the Economic and Social Council through Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. She is also a member of American Association of University Women, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., the National Women’s Studies Association and Society for AIDS in Africa and Affirmative Action on Gender Equality.
Last December, she received a scholarship to present at the 16th International Conference on AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections in Africa in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The three Fulbright scholarships, among the most prestigious academic awards in the country, are major accomplishments for the students, both in personal stature and the opportunity it gives them to continue their scholarly work, according to Kenneth Shockley, UB’s Fulbright adviser and associate professor of philosophy.
The steady stream of Fulbright awards—UB is now accustomed to having multiple winners each year—also is a statement about the quality of the university, he says.
“UB should be very proud of these grantees, as we should be of all those students awarded fellowships of such prestige and subject to such competition,” Shockley says. “They demonstrate the caliber of our student body and the capacity of UB students to compete successfully against the best and the brightest of the most elite universities in the U.S.”
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