Sarah Auffret, sauffret@asu.edu
(480) 965-6991
April 25, 2005

9 ASU students win Fulbright awards to study abroad

Nine ASU students have been selected to receive Fulbright awards for graduate study and research abroad. The past three years have been the best for Fulbrights in ASU’s history, with nine chosen last year and 10 the year before.

Though these students are the first to be notified of their grants from the U.S. Student Fulbright Program so far this year, others may continue to be announced throughout the spring and summer.

Fulbright grant contestants apply for a particular country and find specialists who are willing to work with them on their chosen course of study. They receive full travel, living and academic expenses for an academic year.

The nine Fulbright winners include three graduating seniors: Benjamin Savitch, majoring in biology and political science; Joanna Iacovelli, anthropology; and Jarrod Shobe, political science and accountancy. Another winner, Renata Keller, graduated in December in history and Spanish.

Three are doctoral students: Mary Bryan Curd, whose focus is art history; Kari Jordan-Diller, studying linguistics; and Sarah Boyle, ecology and conservation biology.

Two more are in master’s programs: Janelle Sandene, exercise and wellness; and Amanda Pepping, trumpet performance.

Savitch is an extraordinary young man who has been doing biomedical research at the Translational Genomics Institute (TGen), gathering tissue samples from patients to identify genetic markers for devastating diseases. He will join a top medical researcher in Norway who is developing molecular targets for brain cancer for anti-invasive therapies.

Iacovelli will teach English in Indonesia , using her experience teaching English to Mexican immigrant women as a volunteer. Since Indonesia is a very diverse culture, with many languages, religions and ethnicities, she hopes to study how ethnic diversity plays a role in everyday decision making.

Shobe, who interned last summer at the U.S. Embassy in Brazil , will study international relations and Malaysian foreign policy at the National University of Malaysia. He’ll also conduct interviews and do research on the effects of religion, economic conditions and the new prime minister on U.S.-Malay relations.

Keller, a Flinn and National Merit Scholar who plans to become a university professor, will teach English in Argentina. She also hopes to study the changing role of the country’s public secondary education system under various governments.

Curd, a former chair of the English department at Tempe High School , will study in the Netherlands. She will pursue her interest in late 17th-century Dutch portrait painters who emigrated to England but retained their Netherlandish contacts.

Jordan-Diller, who grew up the daughter of linguists and community developers in the minority Prai community of Thailand, will return to Thailand to work with a team of educators and language specialists. She will study the effects of teaching Prai children and their parents to read and write in their own language.

Boyle is an accomplished researcher and teacher who has won a number of awards and grants while at ASU. She will study in Brazil with a leading primatologist, collaborating to investigate how Amazonian forest fragmentation affects the behavior and survival of the endangered bearded saki monkey.

Sandene is an avid athlete and teacher who has taught swimming to preschoolers, biology and physical education to ASU undergraduates, and water aerobics to the elderly. She will teach English in Korea, also participating in tae kwon do training.

Pepping will study with one of the top trumpet teachers and historians in the world in Germany. Under his guidance she will study historical instruments and learn to play the Baroque trumpet, a modern replica of the ancient Natural trumpet with added venting holes.

Auffret, with Marketing & Strategic Communications, can be reached at (480) 965-6991 or (sauffret@asu.edu).