Maia Salholz-Hillel ’15 said she has been fascinated by neuroscience since her freshman year of high school when her biology class spent two days studying the brain. The fact that the brain was the blueprint of everything and yet we only have a minimal understand of how it works blew her mind, “no pun intended,” she said. This fascination led her to pursue work in the field, culminating in her recent receiving of a Fulbright Scholarship to study neuroscience in Berlin.
As of Thursday, the U.S. State Department has awarded six Dartmouth students and alumni with Fulbright U.S. Student grants to conduct research or teach abroad.
The recipients are Salholz-Hillel, Emily Estelle ’15, Georgia Travers ’13, Jake Levine ’15, Ellen Nye ’14 and Zachary Wenner ’10. Two Dartmouth students, Lucas Katler ’15 and Margaret Allyn ’15, were selected as Fulbright alternates.
Estelle said that the scholarship advising office helped her during the process as a source of information. She noted that the internal Dartmouth deadlines ensure that application materials get reviewed several times before the final review. Estelle will be an English teaching assistant in Morocco and said she decided to apply as a natural transition from her mentoring and tutoring work at Dartmouth, such as her work with RWIT. Estelle spent two abroad terms in Morocco through foreign study programs and said she is excited for the chance to work in a professional setting overseas and to improve her Arabic.
She noted that Morocco seems like “many small countries in one,” as it is located between Africa, the Middle East and Europe and is culturally, linguistically and geographically unique.
“It was the first place that ever I traveled outside the country,” Estelle said. “I kind of fell in love with it then and I feel like I have a special attachment to it as a place. It’s more than just a research interest at this point.”
Salholz-Hillel also formed a connection with the future location of her Fulbright research — Germany. She said that she spent four days in Germany before attending Dartmouth and immediately felt connected to the place — even in the pouring rain. Salholz-Hillel spent her freshman summer in Berlin and found herself impressed by the “science scene and general landscape” in the country. She noted the accessibility of lectures and the abundance of scientific foundations and centers.
When she began her neuroscience research at Dartmouth she discovered that her initial gut feeling about the quality of research in Germany was right — it is a leading country in the field, she said.
Salholz-Hillel plans to complete a masters degree at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain and will be doing research in a lab focusing on decision making. The work combines her interest in language and neuroscience, she said, as it focuses on the how native language and learned language affect the decision making process.
“It’s not the day-to-day that attracts me to research, but the bigger picture,” Salholz-Hillel said. “The idea that we can explore a question and go through a process and get to at least a tentative answer. And we can take that tentative answer from basic science and bring it to practical applications in the world.”
Travers said she applied because of the mission of the Fulbright scholarship to foster communication and cultural exchange between the U.S. and other countries. She said she decided to do research in Morocco because it seemed like a good place to improve both her Arabic and French language skills.
She received a James B. Reynolds Scholarship for Foreign Study after graduating from Dartmouth in 2013 and spent the following year in Muscat, Oman working with female entrepreneurs. She noted that she built skills through that program that she will apply through her Fulbright research working with and examining the effectiveness of several sustainable ecological agriculture projects.
During her time at Dartmouth, Travers began to explore the issue of how agriculture relates to social and political dynamics, she said. She credited several professors, including anthropology professor John Watanabe and history professor George Trumbull, with cultivating her interests.
Wenner will be working in Bulgaria focusing on “the nascent ecosystem” of impact investors and social entrepreneurs in the country. He will be looking at how international and domestic actors use socially-driven capital to address social problems through market-based approaches. In particular, he will be focusing on efforts in the agriculture sector because of its potential to be a “tool for economic security.”
He decided to do his work in Bulgaria because he said the country is at an interesting crossroads — it joined the European Union in 2007 — and is looking towards innovative approaches to create a better environment for low-income vulnerable populations.
Wenner noted that he did not initially aim to go into this type of work, but became interested when he was exposed to creative thinkers applying for-profit ideas to social issues while working at a financial firm after he graduated from Dartmouth. He then transferred to a research role and currently works at a policy research organization in Washington, D.C.
“I have been doing a lot of this from behind a desk, reading policy statements and looking at complex transactions as an observer looking in,” Wenner said. “I see this as my chance to get my hands dirty and be a part of things that I have been studying and researching about from afar.”
Levine said that he was inspired to apply for the scholarship after completing the Dartmouth Volunteer Teaching Program in the Marshall Islands last winter. On the program, Levine taught algebra and coached rugby and discovered how much he enjoyed doing both, he said. The program director, education professor emeritus Andrew Garrod, was instrumental in his application and decision to apply, he said.
Levine will be working as an English teaching assistant in Colombia. He said he decided to work in Colombia because of his previous travel experience in Latin America. He noted that he was particularly interested in the service element of the Fulbright scholarship. Levine will attend medical school after completing the scholarship and said he plans to work in a health clinic in a hospital while in Colombia.
Nye will be doing research in Turkey. If they are selected as scholars, Katler will be in Italy focusing on drama and Allyn will be teaching English in Thailand.
The U.S. Student Program is a subsidiary of the Fulbright Program, an international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Since the program’s founding in 1946, over 300,000 students, professors and professionals have traveled to more than 155 countries.
Each fall, students and young professionals seeking Fulbright grants submit applications to the J. W. Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, whose members award grants to over 1,500 American students and recent graduates. The board sends out notifications of acceptance between January and June. Currently, not all countries have notified candidates of acceptance to the program, so more Dartmouth students and alumni could be receiving Fulbright grants in the coming months. Last year, 13 students and alumni were awarded Fulbright Scholarships.
