Winchester Student, Mark Russell, Wins Fulbright Scholarship

BURLINGTON, VT (06/08/2012)(readMedia)-- Mark Russell, a Winchester, Va. native and a University of Vermont graduate student, has been awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student Program Scholarship. The prestigious award is a fully funded, year-long academic fellowship which enables seniors, recent graduates and graduate students who have an outstanding academic record to live abroad and conduct research or teach English as part of an intellectual and cultural exchange.

Russell has been awarded a Fulbright English teaching assistantship to Germany for the 2012-2013 academic year. He will also teach English as well as American government, history and civics.

Teaching has always been a passion for Russell; he graduated magna cum laude from Shenandoah University in 2008 with a bachelor's degree in music education. But during his time at Shenandoah he became passionate about Germany and learning the German language. He ultimately decided that he saw himself as a language teacher, which led him to enroll in UVM's graduate German program. As a graduate student he is focusing his master's thesis on studying how music impacts German culture.

Russell credits Professor Dennis Mahoney in the German department for pushing and encouraging him to thrive in his language studies and his master's thesis. As a Fulbright Scholar, Russell will have the chance to perfect his German as well as his teaching, and when he returns to the U.S. he plans to become a German teacher.

Russell is one of five Fubright winners from UVM this year. "The Fulbright competition has become one of our most successful national fellowship competitions in the past few years," notes Lisa Schnell, associate dean of UVM's Honors College. "Brit Chase, our Fellowships Coordinator who recruits and advises students interested in the Fulbright competition, has effectively tapped into the rich vein of excellence and commitment to global issues on campus. Year after year, the campus Fulbright committee, which interviews all applicants in the fall, is truly impressed by the depth of the applicant pool." Schnell also remarked, "We had eleven very deserving finalists this year, and we wish all of them had won Fulbrights, but we're just thrilled for the five students who did - it's a very tough competition, and this is a wonderful result."

Russell and UVM's other four winners are among more than 1,500 U.S. citizens who will travel abroad for the 2012-2013 academic year through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. The primary source of funding for the Fulbright Program is an annual appropriation made by the U.S. Congress to the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations and foundations in foreign countries and in the United States also provide direct and indirect support. Recipients of Fulbright grants are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields. The program operates in more than 155 countries worldwide.

Since 2005, when the university put a centralized fellowship outreach and support program in place, 96 UVM students have won or been finalists in the country's most prestigious and competitive competitions, including the Fulbright, Rhodes, Goldwater, Marshall, Udall, Truman, Madison, Gilman and Boren Overseas scholarships.

                                                ###