Over the next year, three students and three professors will bring their Bucknell experiences overseas through educational travel funded by the Fulbright Program and Boren Awards.
Sara Butler ’21, who graduated in May with degrees in physics and philosophy, received a Fulbright to study quantum gravity in Vienna.
“You could work your entire life on this kind of research without solving the problem,” she says. “I don’t expect to get results, but I do hope to have a greater sense of working within a group and knowing how to think like a scientist, especially when it comes to deeply theoretical problems.”
Three Bucknell professors received Fulbrights.
Professor Zhiqun Zhu, political science and international relations, will travel to Australia to study that country’s relationship with the United States in the context of China’s rise as a global power. Professor Lara Dick, mathematics, will travel to Cyprus to continue her research on how math teachers can use technology to help students learn more effectively. Professor Nathan Ryan, mathematics, will fly to Costa Rica to teach college-level computational mathematics, research number theory and coach a middle school math team.
Meanwhile, Susie Williams ’23 and Cole Reish ’23 will study abroad with funding from the Boren Awards, which support students who want to learn languages deemed critical to U.S. national security. In exchange for having their costs covered, students commit to one year of posteducation service.
Reish will spend nine months in Latvia studying Russian to advance his goal of working in the intelligence community. Williams will spend eight months in Kazakhstan, also studying Russian, to prepare for a career in the foreign service. She hopes to return with more than just a greater command of the Russian language.
“It’s going to offer me perspectives that I never would have had otherwise,” she says. “It will be crazy coming back here and knowing that no one else will fully understand what I’ve experienced.” — Bryan Wendell
