Morris says the bulk of her work in the last year has been one-on-one meetings with student applicants: “incredibly intense conversations, and five or six drafts of every essay.” With a JD and an MFA in Creative Writing — and two completed novels — she draws on extensive writing experience to coach her students through multiple revisions. Together they dig up biographical details and potential areas of specialization, often surprising themselves in the process. “If you repeat it back to them — ‘Here are the three things I see you gravitating toward’ — they say, ‘Oh, really? I haven’t thought of that.’” Students also have to envision themselves as an outsider might see them. When Whitebread applied for the Fulbright, Morris and Becker reminded her she had a special advantage as a Texan applying to teach in Germany, where a romantic stereotype of Texans as cowboys persists. She proved a good
fit for the school in Germany, which had specifically requested to work with a Texan.
Expanding What’s Possible Morris’ biggest challenge is often making students aware of the opportunities available to them, especially if they aren’t familiar with the specific awards. “A huge part of my job is telling students, ‘People will pay you to do interesting things because you’re excellent,’” she says. The more applications a university submits, the bigger it gets on the radar of funding committees. The Fulbright has taken notice of St. Edward’s in part because of Becker’s affiliation with the Goethe Institute and its German Summer School program in Taos, N.M., highly regarded by the academics who review applications for the German teaching assistantships. When
Becker encourages students to apply, he uses a strategy he learned from a mentor at UT– Austin. “I always ask candidates to read [the bestselling 1958 novel] The Ugly American and tell them that they should spend the first six months listening, learning the language and the subtleties of the culture, and not teaching about the United States,” he says. “I remind them that Fulbright was a senator from Arkansas who wanted to build a bridge between countries, and it goes both ways. We should go and listen and learn.” He asks students to build this humility and global awareness into their applications.
A Waiting Game Once the final drafts are written, the recommendation letters are gathered and the whole packet’s in the mail, all anyone can do
Rebecca Marino, ’10
Rebecca Marino, ’10
Rebecca Marino, ’10
Fulbright Applications: A Sampling
Jake Cowan ’10
Amanda Bartenstein ’09
Caitlin Greenwood ’09
Major: Religious Studies Applying for: Fulbright Full Grant to Germany
Major: English Literature Minor: German
Major: Philosophy Minor: English Writing and Rhetoric
Applying for: Fulbright Teaching Assistantship to Germany, and Austrian teaching assistantship
Applying for: Fulbright Full Grant to Germany
Research interest: “The Third Reich posthumously held up composer Wagner as an ideal German nationalist. How and why did they make this association, and is it fair to Wagner? I’ve arranged to work with two prominent Wagner scholars and hope to meet Wagner’s descendants.”
Research interest: “German and Austrian literature are vastly different despite the common language. The literature of Germany has dealt with guilt about the Holocaust, but Austrian writers have been more reluctant to acknowledge their country’s role. Also, Germans typically separate comedy and tragedy, but Austrians often combine them in dark comedy.”
Research interest: “The writing of WWII POW veteran Heinrich Böll speaks to a specific type of guilt stemming from the struggle of faith and obligations to society — a necessary mentality for today’s generation as it deals with the ramifications of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.”
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