The U.S. Department of State’s Fulbright Scholarship Board held its quarterly meeting at the University of Chicago earlier this month, its first time on a university campus and a reflection of UChicago’s international reach and long history with the scholarship program.
In introducing the event, Provost Thomas F. Rosenbaum told the gathered crowd that the UChicago and the Fulbright program have a shared commitment: developing mutual understanding through intellectual exchange. “We send students and faculty abroad with the expectation that the exchange there will not only influence their current scholarship, but will help develop a worldview that will inform scholarship into the future,” he said.
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The Fulbright leadership used the meeting to discuss how new technology and e-learning can change higher education, and help Fulbright scholars share knowledge with audiences around the world.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel also spoke to the Fulbright board and alumni, who had gathered from across the globe for the meeting. “We welcome you all the time to come here and study here,” Emanuel said, noting that immigrants and international visitors have participated in some of the great advances in education that the academic community of the city of Chicago has produced.
“You will get the American experience in no other city better than the city of the Chicago,” he said.
Graduate students at the University of Chicago consistently win the most Fulbright-Hays awards of any university to continue their doctoral dissertation research abroad.
—Prof. Jacqueline Stewart
