Fulbrights and fellowships

BC has been ranked consistently among the nation’s top producers of student Fulbright winners, according to statistics compiled by The Chronicle of Higher Education. Recipients are chosen for Fulbrights, which are sponsored by the United States Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, on the basis of academic merit and leadership potential.  

•Fulbright recipient Frances Grace Hart, who graduated from the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences last December, also won a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, which seeks to broaden participation of the full spectrum of diverse talents in STEM. The five-year fellowship provides three years of financial support. Her research proposal was titled “A computational investigation of the influence of death attitudes and religious identity on high-risk behaviors.”

•Sancia Sehdev ’25 (MCAS) received a Barry Goldwater Scholarship, the nation’s premier undergraduate award in the sciences.

•A David L. Boren National Security Education Program Scholarship, which enables American undergraduates to study abroad in areas of the world that are critical to United States interests and underrepresented in study abroad, was awarded to Lucas Geromini ’26 (Connell School of Nursing), who will study Arabic in Amman, Jordan. Ethan Erickson ’26 (MCAS) was selected as an alternate Boren candidate to study Croatian, and will participate in the “BC in Croatia: War, Peace and Reconciliation” program in Zagreb, Croatia, next spring.

•Selected for Critical Language Scholarships were Jess Navarette, a doctoral student in theology, to study Hindi, and Julia Lovas ’25 (MCAS) and Mattheus Tiger Braga ’24 (Carroll School of Management) for the study of Chinese. The program, sponsored and overseen by the U.S. Department of State, is part of a larger government effort to expand the number of Americans studying and mastering foreign languages that are crucial to U.S. national security, economic prosperity, and engagement with the world.

•Amen Amare ’26 (MCAS) received a scholarship from the Fund for Education Abroad program, which supports students with financial need who are underrepresented among the U.S. study-abroad population. She will take part in the BC faculty-led summer program “The European Union: The Economic and Political Shaping of Europe” in Lisbon.

•The Omar A. Aggad Travel and Research Fellowship program was established through the gift of a Boston College family to inspire BC students to expand their understanding of the Arab world, and of the relationships between Arab societies and the West. Fellowships were recently awarded to MCAS undergraduates Sophie Termaat ’25, for her spring semester research project in Cairo, “Women in Egypt: A Comparative Analysis of Legal and Social Status from Ancient to Contemporary Times,” and Samiksh Jain ’25, for his summer term research project in Kuwait, “Queer Existence in an Islamic Nation: Analyzing Legal, Religious, and Health Perspectives.”

•The U.S. Department of State’s Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program enables students of limited financial means to study or intern abroad, providing them with skills essential to American national security and economic prosperity. Recent Gilman awardees from BC include Morrissey College students Madison Knapp ’25, for study in Sweden; Camille Longabardi ’25, Spain; Nnenna Okorie ’26, Ghana; Julie Huynh ’26, Ireland; Eileen Kim ’26, Spain; and Rebecca Atkins ’26 and Nicole Carrara ’26, UK. In addition, Lamar Duncan ’24 received a Gilman to study in the Netherlands last fall.

•Theodore Wind ’25 (CSOM) received the highly selective Japanese Student Services Organization Scholarship award, offered to qualified international students to help with their study and research expenses in Japan.