Returned Fulbright Scholars Encourage Others to Apply

03/09/2009

Feruz Akobirov, an English teacher at Bukhara State University and one of the Uzbek participants in the Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant Program, makes presentation on Uzbekistan

Feruz Akobirov knew his English would improve after spending a year in the United States. What he didn’t expect was just how interested people in Arizona would be in Uzbekistan, or that he’d become a fan of American football.

He didn’t know he would end up teaching his native Tajik language as well as Uzbek, that his colleagues would lend him things like silverware and bed sheets to help ease his arrival, or that he’d make excursions into the desert with other international students.

“I loved people’s attitudes toward each other. It was very warm, really very touching,” he said. “I was really amazed to learn they were so interested (in Uzbekistan).”

Akobirov, an English teacher at Bukhara State University, spent the 2007-2008 academic year as a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. He taught Uzbek four days a week to a small class of graduate and undergraduate students, then extended his stay two months to teach a summer course of Tajik. He also took classes in Spanish, U.S. Government and American Literature, and his English improved enormously, in part because he shared a house with native English speakers.

All of which greatly improved his abilities as an English teacher in Bukhara, he said.

“Previously, I felt that I couldn’t answer all of my students’ questions. My knowledge of the U.S. was limited,” Akobirov said. “When I came back, I felt that my knowledge had really increased.”

Akobirov now encourages his students in Bukhara to consider studying in the U.S., and he is a big fan of the Fulbright programs, he said.

“I want them to see it with their own eyes,” Akobirov said. “But they shouldn’t forget about their homeland. When the program ends, they should come back to their Motherland and spread the word, spread their knowledge.”

This month, the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent is putting out a call for applications for three Fulbright programs and the Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Program for the 2010-2011 academic year. The Fulbright and Hubert Humphrey Programs, open to students and scholars around the world, are the flagship higher education exchange programs administered by the U.S. Government. The grants cover travel, tuition and other costs, and provide stipends throughout the course of the program.

• The Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program is for college and university professors and professionals to lecture and research in the United States for between four and 12 months;
• The Fulbright Foreign Student Program is for graduate students, young professionals, and artists who wish to study or conduct research in the U.S. for one year or longer. Students usually study in the humanities, social sciences and hard sciences such as engineering;
• The Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant (FLTA) Program is for English teachers who want to study in the U.S. for one year while also teaching classes in their native language. The program strengthens foreign language teaching in the U.S., while giving teachers the chance to improve their English and refine their teaching skills;
• The Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Program is a one-year program open to mid-career professionals who have a record of leadership and commitment to public service. Fellows create a program of independent study at a leading U.S. university.

Each year the Fulbright program awards about 7,000 grants to students and scholars from 155 countries. These include about 1,600 for foreign students, 850 to visiting scholars and 170 in the Hubert Humphrey program, according to the U.S. Department of State, which runs the programs. In 2007, the U.S. Government spent about $198 million on the Fulbright programs.

“The U.S. receives huge benefits from learning from scholars from around the world. That’s why we do this,” said Carol Fajardo, the Public Affairs Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent. “We also hope the scholars themselves will find the experience meaningful and worthwhile.”

Since the 2005-2006 academic year, about 26 students and scholars from Uzbekistan have gone to the U.S. on the Fulbright and Humphrey programs, according to the Public Affairs Office, which organizes the programs. About half of those were FLTA teachers, with the others divided among the other programs.

Among the Fulbrighters from Uzbekistan was Viktoria Levinskaya, a scholar in philosophy and religious studies who runs the Learning Resource Center at Westminster International University in Tashkent. She spent the 2002-2003 academic year as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar, lecturing on political philosophy and civil society at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. She also toured universities across the U.S., from the states of Ohio to Idaho in the Northwest, lecturing on similar topics, she said.

Levinskaya returned in March 2007 as a Fulbright Specialist in a program called “Direct Access to the Muslim World.” She was assigned to Jackson State University, an institution that has historically served African-American students in Jackson, Mississippi, the capital of one of the least economically developed states in the U.S.

She lectured at high schools, before civic groups and at other historically Black colleges around Mississippi, teaching about Uzbekistan and the basics of Islam to audiences who knew little or nothing about the topics, she said. Rather than getting into detailed discussions of theology, she simply showed photos of bazaars, mosques and the countryside of Uzbekistan and started talking about the food, clothing, culture and traditions of a distant land.

Levinskaya said she was amazed at her audiences’ thirst for knowledge and the warmth of their welcome.

“They were cherishing me in a way, they were so hospitable,” she said of her Mississippi audiences.

Apart from teaching Americans about Uzbekistan and Islam, Levinskaya said she learned an enormous amount about race relations, the interaction between states in the North and South, and regional differences in language and culture within the U.S. Her experience in Mississippi was completely different than that in Washington, D.C., she said, but maybe even more rewarding.

Levinskaya strongly encouraged scholars and students in Uzbekistan to apply for the Fulbrights. It is a wonderful personal experience, and also a great way to deepen relations between the nations, she said.

“Sometimes people have a fear or a wrong perception about Americans. Maybe they think they won’t make friends, or the Americans won’t be interested,” she said. “People are very interested in us. Especially in the smaller places, you’ll be a star. You can be a very good cultural ambassador for your country.”

For more information about the Fulbright and Humphrey programs and how to apply, please click on the links above. The application deadline for each program is July 1, except for the Fulbright Visiting Scholar program, which has a deadline of Nov. 1.