Eleven current and recently graduated Trojans have been selected for the prestigious Fulbright Fellowship on the basis of academic achievement and commitment to cultural engagement.

Established in 1946 and sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the Fulbright Program awards approximately 8,000 grants every year. Approximately 310,000 “Fulbrighters” have participated in the program since its inception.

As the flagship international fellowship program of the United States, the Fulbright Student Grant supports one year of independent study, research and teaching in one of more than 140 countries around the world. Each year, nearly 6,000 students from around the United States compete for about 1,000 Fulbright grants.

The 2012-13 Fulbright Student Grant recipients are:

Caitlin Bradbury ’12 will participate in the Binational Business Internship program in Mexico. Recipients of this grant complete a 10-month internship while enrolled in courses at a university. Bradbury previously studied abroad in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and Santiago, Chile. She graduated in May with a major in international relations (global business) and a minor in organizational leadership and management.

Nelly Chavez ’12 is a recipient of a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Grant to Spain. Chavez enjoys helping students with literacy and linguistic challenges, especially English-language learners. She hopes to bring this intimate knowledge to her secondary school teaching assignment in Madrid. Chavez graduated from USC with majors in American studies and ethnicity and French, and a minor in Latin American studies.

Huibin A. Chew PhD ’12 will explore the interplay between Filipino anti-imperialist movements and transnational feminism by examining the activities of GABRIELA, the largest federation of women’s groups in the Philippines. This study will serve as a foundation for Chew’s dissertation research on gendered violence and the transnational politics of urban women organizing in the Philippines.

Joanne Cho MPH ’09 will study the cultural and social stigmas of mental health care utilization and its correlation to high suicide rates among younger women in South Korea. She will be based at the Yonsei Graduate School of Public Health, where she will work with Sun-Ha Jee to identify participants for the study.

Sarah Goodrum PhD ’12 will spend one year in Germany to complete research for her dissertation, which examines photography in the Cold War period in East Germany under the leadership of the Socialist Unity Party. Goodrum seeks to unite the study of the visual with the study of structures of power. She will examine state archives and interview photographers, curators and East German scholars during her time in Berlin.

Nina Gordon-Kirsch ’12 graduated USC with a major in environmental studies and a minor in marketing. She plans to spend her Fulbright year researching levels of endocrine disrupting compounds in Israeli water, starting from treatment sites and ending in natural ecosystems. Her research methods will consist of water samples, water testing and evaluations at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.

Ayushi Gummadi ’12 received a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship Grant to South Africa. Graduating with a major in business administration (international relations) and a minor in neuroscience, Gummadi is committed to enacting positive social change at the grassroots level. In addition to teaching, she hopes to create a regional dance program and visit the village of Mpumalanga, where she previously worked on a community based microenterprise project.

Christine Lee ’09 graduated from USC with a degree in health promotion and disease prevention studies, and minors in health communication and professional and managerial communications. She will spend her Fulbright year in South Korea exploring the role of media as a source of reproductive health information among adolescents. Her project will involve conducting an analysis of sources available to and accessed by adolescents, including schools, nonprofits and media.

Daniel Paly ’12 graduated from USC with a degree in economics and international relations. As a Fulbright fellow, he will study the role of public policy support for private industry in the nascent Brazilian solar energy sector by examining regulatory infrastructure, government direct investment and a potential Feed-In-Tariff. Paly will conduct his study from the Universidade de São Paulo.

Teddy Raven ’10 graduated from the USC Thornton School of Music with a focus in saxophone performance and composition in jazz studies. He will study Bulgarian folk music at the Academy of Music, Dance and Fine Arts in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, and seek to fuse his background in jazz and western music with more traditional forms. In addition, he will perform with the world-renowned Karandila Gypsy Brass Orchestra and help them carry out an education initiative for underprivileged Roma youth.

Michael Shashoua ’12 received a Fulbright grant to study in Madrid. He will explore the use of microfinance in Spain to supplement the knowledge of microfinance in developed countries. He plans to conduct a study of client profiles, sustainable lender practices and structural weaknesses. Shashoua graduated with a major in business administration (international relations), and a minor in communication law and media policy.

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