Fulbright Gateway Orientation
• July 30 - August 3, 2012
• 58 students from 36 countries
• Talks, workshops, tours and presentations
Students from around the world gathered Tuesday on campus to understand their role as international scholars before spreading out to study all across the United States.
OU welcomed students from nearly 40 countries to the Fulbright Gateway Orientation. These students, all Fulbright grant recipients, will pursue degrees at colleges across the U.S. during the next few years.
This year, OU is hosting the first of 10 orientations, which take place each year at chosen U.S. universities. All first-year Fulbright foreign students with advanced language skills are invited to attend an orientation, according to Fulbright.
The students at the orientation come from nearly 40 countries, including Colombia, Germany and Rwanda, according to the program schedule.
Maya Alkateb, a native of Syria, is one participant. She will attend the University of Indiana as an art education major in the fall.
“One benefit of this program is that it is not only educational,” Alkateb said. “There is also a terrific opportunity for meeting people from different cultures and backgrounds.”
While in Norman, Alkateb said she is excited to tour the National Weather Center after reading about the state’s sirens and tornadoes. In addition, she said hopes to meet Center for Middle East Studies director Joshua Landis, author of the blog Syria Comment.
Lisandro Colantonio, a native of Argentina, also is attending. He will study epidemiology at the University of Alabama-Birmingham this fall.
Colantonio said the Fulbright Program will allow him to pursue a doctorate in his major, an opportunity not available in Argentina. He wanted to move to the U.S. to improve his English, which will be important in his research career.
“To obtain grants you have to publish, and you have to publish in English,” Colantonio said.
The orientation week includes talks and workshops to help students understand their role as Fulbright scholars and guide them in their academic, personal and professional lives in the U.S., according to a press release.
The welcome Tuesday morning included a talk by Shelby Lewis, professor emeritus at Clark Atlanta University and member of the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.
Lewis, one of 12 board members, was appointed to her position by President Barack Obama in 2010. The board supervises the Fulbright Program and is responsible for the final selection of all Fulbright awardees, Lewis said.
Lewis, a former Fulbright scholar, worked as a Senior Fulbright Lecturer at the National University of Lesotho in the early 1980s and as a Fulbright Specialist in Uganda in 2010, she said.
In her speech, Lewis emphasized the “importance of the Fulbright Program as a people to people program that is intended to bring about mutual understanding and peace,” she said.
Lewis also emphasized the fact that Fulbright scholars and students can make a difference, she said. Fulbright Scholars have gone on to be Pulitzer Prize winners, Noble Laureates and Heads of State, she said.
Lewis said she also spoke of two initiatives. The first was the board’s priority of ensuring diversity in the Fulbright scholars, she said.
“We want people from urban and rural, big and small universities, and different ethnicities,” she said. “We want to have the essence of the countries represented, and we’re working hard in our outreach to do it.”
The second initiative was to encourage Fulbright scholars to share their stories with those around them, she said.
“We are encouraging Fulbrighters to tell their stories, to travel wherever they are to talk about their adventures, their opportunities, their pain and their triumphs,” she said. “Tell the Fulbright story, because it is through stories that we best open ourselves up to the global world.”
Lewis also expressed her gratitude to the new scholars.
“We welcome all of them to the Fulbright family,” she said. “We think that they bring as much as they get, and we are all better citizens of the world as a result of this exchange.”
To give students a firsthand taste of American and local culture, Wednesday will include tours of the Oklahoma Memorial Stadium and the National Weather Center, ending with a dinner on Campus Corner, according to the program schedule.
The orientation will end Thursday evening with a Native American Cultural Night. The participants will experience traditional Native American music, dance and attire, in addition to a traditional meal, according to the program schedule.
