Two graduating seniors have been selected to receive prestigious Fulbright Grants to live and conduct research abroad. Alexandra Fiorillo ’03 and Gregory Smith ’03, both scholars enrolled in the college´s Toor Cummings Center for International Studies and the Liberal Arts (CISLA), will spend a year working in Ecuador and Germany respectively.
Fiorillo, an economics and Latin American Studies double major and women’s studies minor, will study the impact of community-based microfinance programs on two indigenous groups: the Quichua and the Shuar in Ecaudor. Smith, an economics and German double major, proposed to research the impact of currency union on labor mobility at three border German cities: Saarbrücken, Trier and Aachen.
Administered by the Institute of International Education, the Fulbright program operates in more than 140 countries and offers a variety of grant opportunities. Smith, who deferred Georgetown University’s M.A. program in German and European Studies for a year, will take take graduate economics courses and work on a thesis at the University of Trier. Fiorillo will spend one academic year working with Acción International and several other organizations that focus on poverty alleviation while developing her own microfinance projects.
Both students’ research proposals stem from their CISLA Senior Integrative Projects. Fiorillo spent the summer of her junior year advising indigenous peoples on development projects and doing policy research at Banco Solidario in Quito, Ecuador. Smith conducted an internship at the European Macroeconomic Policy Research Department at Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt. They are both now completing honors theses.
“CISLA has had a very good record for Fulbright and Watson fellowships,” said Fred Paxton, Director of the Toor Cummings Center and Dean of International Studies. “When you describe your post-graduate project to the Fulbright Committee and you have had your internship, have had the course work and the thinking about what you want to do, it is impressive. It doesn’t come out of a week or two of thinking, or even a month or two of thinking, but it comes out of several years of preparation.”
In the past 10 years, Connecticut College has had 15 Fulbright Fellows working on various projects in Germany, Argentina, Korea, Japan, Italy, Switzerland, and Ecuador.
View the CISLA site.
Ranked among the most selective private liberal arts colleges in the nation, Connecticut College has an enrollment of approximately 1,850 men and women from 44 states, the District of Columbia, and 55 countries. The college is particularly known for interdisciplinary studies, innovative international programs, paid internships, and a wide range of student-faculty research opportunities. Founded in 1911, the college operates under an 80-year-old honor code and has no Greek system. The scenic 750-acre campus is managed as an arboretum and overlooks Long Island Sound. For more information, see www.conncoll.edu. Connecticut College is located at 270 Mohegan Ave., New London. |
