Five Seniors Receive
Fulbright Teaching Fellowships
By Betty Gabrielli / Photos by Eva Green
'06
May 23, 2005
For their academic merit and leadership potential,
Oberlin seniors Susan Albright, Lidia Arshavsky, Monica Lee,
Annelies Fryberger, and Reginald Patterson have received
Fulbright fellowships to teach English abroad during the
next academic year.
Albright, who is majoring in French, will teach in Grenoble,
France, and conduct research on the pedagogy of Francophone
literature—the study of the literature of French-speaking
people who are not French—in French high schools. Albright,
who is from York, Pennsylvania, then hopes to work as a French
teacher in a private school in this country before pursuing
a graduate degree.
Arshavsky emigrated from Russia when she was seven and is
fluent in French and Spanish as well as in Russian and English. "I
feel very strongly about the need to improve cross-cultural
communication," she says. "My teaching assistantship
in France will allow me to gain more teaching experience
and improve my French."
The creative writing major, who is from Newton, Massachusetts,
spent spring 2003 studying at the Sorbonne and this semester
studying at the University of Cordoba in Spain. Upon her
return to the United States, she plans to apply to graduate-level
interpretation programs in Paris and Geneva and pursue a
career in translation and interpretation.
Lee, a sociology major from Westmont, Illinois, will journey
to Germany in mid-August to serve as a teaching assistant
in Berlin. She says she will take classes at a university
and also continue her research on the German university system
as it undergoes significant financial reforms. Post Fulbright
plans include graduate school in sociology.
Guadeloupe, the center of the Caribbean's Creole culture,
is the destination of Fryberger and Patterson.
Fryberger, a French and piano performance double-degree
student from Black Mountain, North Carolina, says she is
excited about teaching in the Caribbean, as she did her honors
project on the great French poet from Martinique, Aimé Cesaire.
Her post-Fulbright plans include graduate school.
Patterson, who is from the San Francisco Bay Area, is
a double degree student in French and viola performance
with a minor in African American Studies. For his honors
project, he studied the popular 17th century French fabulist
Jean de La Fontaine and the promotion of his work in the
Francophone world.
While teaching English, Patterson plans to learn the Creole
dialect spoken in Guadeloupe and use it to learn how the
country's history of slavery and colonialism has affected
its educational system.
"Teaching English in a Francophone country whose history
is personally interesting will allow me to be among the majority
after having always been a minority," he says.
After his Fulbright year, Patterson will work toward a Ph.D.
degree in French and Francophone literature at Duke University.
An
international educational program sponsored by the U.S. Department
of State and Department of Education, the Fulbright Program
is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people
of the United States and those from other countries. The program
has provided more than 250,000 participants with the opportunity
to study and teach in other countries, exchange ideas, and
develop joint solutions to shared concerns.
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