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Patrick McDevitt is associate professor of history and UB's Fulbright adviser.
What is the purpose of the Fulbright Program and who administers it?
The U.S. Congress created the Fulbright Program in 1946, immediately after World War II, to foster mutual understanding among nations through educational and cultural exchanges. Sen. J. William Fulbright, sponsor of the legislation, saw it as a step toward building an alternative to armed conflict. Today, the Fulbright Program is the U.S. government's premier scholarship program. It enables U.S. students and artists to benefit from unique resources in every corner of the world. It enables U.S. citizens to gain international competence in an interdependent world. Each year, the Fulbright Program allows Americans to study or conduct research in more than 140 nations.
What types of grants are available and for whom?
There are four basic categories of grants that come under the rubric of Fulbright: U.S. students, U.S. professors/professionals, foreign students coming to the U.S. and foreign scholars coming to the U.S. While there are links on our Web site (http://www.fulbright.buffalo.edu/) for the latter three categories, my only concern as Fulbright adviser is the first type of grant: U.S. students going abroad for graduate work/teaching assistantships. In order to take up a Fulbright (but not apply for one), a student must hold a B.A./B.S./B.F.A. but not yet have completed a Ph.D./M.D. Students can take classes in a foreign graduate school, work with a larger research group, conduct independent research or some combination. Guidelines are formulated by each country's own committee. For students, there are several types of grants, although not all are available for all countries. Full Fulbright grants usually are for study in any field. For recently graduated seniors, this usually means being enrolled in a graduate program abroad. Usually—but not always—fluency in the country's official language is required for these grants. For graduate students, this may mean a wide range of activities, from independent research to collaboration with local scholars. Travel grants supplement other sources of support. Teaching assistantships are another option for people without fluency in a foreign language if they wish to go to a non-English-speaking country. Theses grants typically fund students to come and learn the language or pursue independent projects part-time while serving as a teaching assistant in English-language classes for children and high school students. In addition, there are other special program opportunities, including Business Grants for Germany, Mexico and Spain; Islamic Civilization Initiative Awards designed to enhance the knowledge and understanding of Islam and of Islamic history and culture as broadly defined; and Fulbright Critical Language Enhancement Awards, available to study Arabic, Azeri, Bengali, Chinese (Mandarin only), Farsi, Gujarati, Hindi, Korean, Marathi, Pashto, Punjabi, Russian, Tajik, Turkish, Urdu and Uzbek.
How successful have UB faculty, staff and students been in receiving these awards?
If I may, I'd like to speak to the students, since that is my portfolio. We have had a fair bit of success in recent years, although we actually have few applicants for this wonderful opportunity. While we are one of the largest public universities in the Northeast, we only have had about a dozen applicants each year. Despite that small number, we have had a number of recent grantees. Currently, there are four UB students/alumni studying abroad thanks to a Fulbright grant, and we have 14 applicants in the current grant cycle waiting to hear about grants. These include applicants in archaeology, film, law, history, economics, engineering, photography, anthropology, comparative literature, music composition and acting.
You studied in New Zealand as a student Fulbright recipient. Tell me a little about your experience. How has your Fulbright experience impacted you, both personally and professionally?
I graduated from New York University in 1992 and took up a Fulbright to New Zealand in February 1993. I did a graduate honors degree in the history department at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. I specifically went to study the history of the British Empire and Commonwealth, and was able to work with some world-renowned scholars there. While the year was professionally important in that the seeds of my eventual doctoral dissertation were sown there, the year was even more important personally. I made lifelong friends with whom I am still close to this day. I also learned to play rugby and did a great deal of traveling and a fair bit of hiking and skiing. I gained a new perspective on the world and the U.S. I would not trade my Fulbright year for anything in the world. It was my desire to help other students have the opportunity to have such an experience that led me to agree to become Fulbright adviser.
You've been involved in developing several study-abroad programs at UB. Tell me about them.
My colleague, Jason Young, and I planned a trip to Haiti in the summer of 2004, although that trip was canceled due to political instability in the wake of Jean Bertran Aristide's ouster. As soon as the political situation is calmer and the U.S. government's travel warning is lifted, I will happily run this trip. In the summer of 2006, I took 12 students to Cork, Ireland, to study Irish history. The trip was a wonderful experience and I immensely enjoyed traveling with students and getting to share in their exploration of a new country. I am an Irish historian; I have a lot of family there and travel to Ireland regularly. It was nice, however, to watch people see the country with fresh eyes. It also was the first time that my children (aged 5 and 3) had gone to Ireland, so that was special. While I am not running the trip this summer, I am planning on running a new version of the trip in summer 2008, although instead of having two history classes, there will be one history class taught by me and one class on European film taught by my wife, Sheila Zamor-McDevitt, who teaches French language and culture at Nichols School in Buffalo.
What do you enjoy most about being UB's Fulbright adviser?
I've met some very impressive students in the course of guiding their applications through the process, and it is always thrilling to learn more about people's intellectual passions, especially when they are so different from my own.