COS Grad Among Fulbright Winners

BY JONATHAN GABRIEL ’06

Five recent UCF graduates — include a College of Sciences alumna — have received prestigious Fulbright awards that will allow them to travel abroad to pursue research and educational opportunities or teach English.

This year’s recipients will represent their alma mater in Montenegro, South Korea, Belgium and Brazil.

The Fulbright U.S. Student Program, sponsored by the State Department, started in 1946 and awards about 1,900 grants annually to scholars from all areas of study. Forty Knights have received Fulbright awards in UCF’s history.

Here’s a look at this year’s College of Sciences winner:

Honors Scholar Noa Tann ’19 majored in international and global studies. She participated in Model United Nations as committee director for the Knights Model UN conference and was also a student research associate in UCF Professor Peter Jacques’ political ecology lab, presenting original research on the impact of the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement.

She has studied Arabic at the Jewish-Arab Center for Peace at Givat Haviva in Israel and interned at the American Security Project, a nonpartisan public-policy think tank, researching climate and energy security issues and co-authoring a white paper on global water disputes.

During the next year, she’ll serve as an English teaching assistant in Brazil. “I hope the Fulbright program will give me valuable experience working and living in a new country, as well as opportunities to represent the U.S. abroad and engage in cultural exchange,” she says.

After her Fulbright experience ends, she plans to pursue a master’s degree in international relations and work for the U.S. Foreign Service. She said she hopes her “Fulbright journey will give me a taste of the international, intercultural line of work I plan to pursue, and help me make a global difference.”

The other ’19 winners are:

Alexis Jahncke, English Literature
Haley Lehew, Biomedical Sciences
Evan Rosato, Studio Art
Paige Timmerman, Elementary Education