UNC Ties for 10th in Student Fulbright Recipients

Posted on Nov. 7, 2011

Carolina has tied for 10th on the U.S. Fulbright program’s list of institutions with the most students and recent graduates receiving Fulbright awards for 2010-11.

Reported recently in The Chronicle of Higher Education, the list ties UNC with Arizona State University, both with 18 student recipients for the year. UNC had three more awards than last year, but its ranking stayed the same.

All institutions besting UNC were private except for the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, which topped the list at 29, and the University of Washington, with 24.

Universities ranked below UNC included Johns Hopkins, Princeton, Brown, Georgetown, Notre Dame and Emory. In all, 600 colleges and universities accounted for 1,700 student Fulbright recipients.

The grants, which cover travel and monthly stipends, send students abroad to help improve U.S. relations with other countries at the grassroots level. The students, chosen for academic merit and leadership potential, study, teach and conduct research while abroad and look for solutions to international concerns.

For example, UNC recipient Giffin Daughtridge ’11 from Greenville will conduct a research project, “The Epidemiology of the Hepatitis B Virus After 20 years of Vaccination,” in Colombia.

Seventeen of UNC’s 2010-11 student Fulbright winners, announced in June, are listed online. The Institute for International Education, which administers the Fulbright program, has not yet announced the 18th.

Sponsored by the U.S. State Department, the program also awards grants for projects abroad to American teachers and college faculty.

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