Haverford College Named Top Fulbright Producer

Earlier today the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs announced the list of American colleges and universities that produced the most Fulbright Student Award recipients last year, and Haverford is proud, once again, to be one of them. Five Fords earned Fulbrights for the 2018–2019 year, putting the College in the company of fewer than 50 undergraduate liberal arts institutions in the country with the highest number of student grants. Almost a third of the Fords who applied for the highly competitive fellowship last year received one.

George O’Hara ’18, Brett Pogostin ’18, Charles Hale ’17, Julian Schneider ’17, and Anna Russell ’14 were all selected for Fulbright Student Awards last spring. O’Hara is now in Kiev, Ukraine, researching the integration of addiction treatment and HIV services into primary care clinics. Pogostin is studying how lipid molecules impact the peptide aggregation that forms plaques in the brains of Parkinson’s patients in a lab in Lund, Sweden. Hale is in Prague, Czech Republic, continuing research on common reed Phragmites australis that he began on campus for his senior thesis. Schneider, who spent the previous year earning his master’s in nationalism studies at Hungary’s Central European University, is now working towards his master’s in law at Kent Law School in Canterbury, England. And Russell, the former managing artistic director of the Allentown Public Theatre, is furthering her theater studies at the Universität Gießen in Germany.

"We are once again absolutely thrilled to see and celebrate our students' extraordinary success in securing Fulbright Awards, which constitute a profound recognition of their extraordinary commitment to enacting ideals of global citizenship," said Haverford College President Kim Benston. "The Fulbright Program will enable them, each in their own way, to enjoy dialogues with learning communities throughout the world that will advance their readiness to become educational leaders for the next generations."

The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program. Top-producing institutions are highlighted annually in The Chronicle of Higher Education. This is the seventh time since 2006 that the College has been designated a Fulbright "Top Producer."

For the past 17 years, Associate Dean of the College and Dean of Academic Affairs Phil Bean has served as the Fulbright Program Advisor at Haverford College, guiding students and alumni through the formidable application process. Because, according to Bean, a successful candidate has to be not just academically accomplished but also committed to the demanding process that results in a credible application, he spends his summers meeting with each Ford applicant several times to workshop their essay intensively.  

"Our scholar-to-application ratio is extremely competitive," said Bean. "In my estimation, every candidate last year was plausible and made their very best effort, and for that reason 100 percent said they found the process educational."

"Phil likes to say that the success of Haverford’s program is tied to having so many hard-working, viable candidates apply each year. While this is surely true, it leaves out the intensive process of turning a research idea into a compelling narrative intertwining an applicant’s past experiences, their proposed plans for their Fulbright year, and what they hope to accomplish afterwards,” said Schneider, this year’s Fulbright recipient in the U.K. “I am very grateful for the support and guidance offered by the Dean’s Office, and am confident that the strength of the program rests on this individualized approach to application-writing." 

Since its inception in 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided more than 390,000 participants—chosen for their academic merit and leadership potential—with the opportunity to exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns. Over 1,900 U.S. students, artists and young professionals in more than 100 different fields of study are offered Fulbright Program grants to study, teach English, and conduct research abroad annually. The Fulbright U.S. Student Program operates in over 140 countries throughout the world. 

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program is a program of the U.S. Department of State, funded by an annual appropriate from the U.S. Congress to the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and supported in its implementation by the institute of International Education. For more information about the Fulbright Program, visit eca.state.gov/fulbright.