Happily, with students and alumni earning 10 Fulbrights, five Critical Language Scholarships, three Boren Scholarships, two Public Policy and International Affairs Program Fellowships and one Rotary Global Grant Scholarship.

“This is certainly exciting news for our institution,” UofL President Neeli Bendapudi said. “But what’s even more important, these prestigious awards are a perfect example of how our campus community puts students first. If you read the web page profiles on these award-winning scholars, you will see many examples of how our faculty, staff and administrators have inspired and mentored students on their academic journey. That’s something that really sets UofL apart from other institutions.”

Recent graduate , who earned a Fulbright, said UofL’s culture supports students who seek academia’s top awards.

“UofL introduced me to research opportunities,” said Udoh. “Being in the honors program — they let you know what opportunities you can pursue. They helped me believe in myself.”

Another Fulbright winner and recent graduate, , said her first meeting with, who heads the national and international scholarship program, was when Jacobs was a sophomore.

“Ever since then, she has given me straightforward and honest advice on how to improve my application. It is evident she cared for my and other students’ dreams as she consistently organized and led workshops for Fulbright throughout the year,” Jacobs said.

Including this year, there have been 120 UofL Fulbright scholars since 2003 — more than all other Kentucky public institutions combined. The university set a record in 2016 with 15 scholars, besting the previous record of 14 scholars in 2010 and again in 2011.

During an event to celebrate the 2018 scholars, Acting Provost Dale Billingsley told attendees that students are the “beneficiaries of the steadily higher arc of performance” in the scholarship program. He thanked Condon and her colleagues Bethany Smith and Dr. Charlie Leonard for their many hours of work to help scholarship applicants.��

“We have an incredible team at this university,” said Condon. “Without the help of Bethany and Charlie and the ongoing support of the honors program, university administrators, and the specialized faculty mentors, we simply couldn’t have had such resounding success.”

Here are a few interesting tidbits about this year’s honorees:

• All of the winners are from Kentucky.
• Six scholars were named as Fulbright alternates. That means they could still receive the prize if more funding becomes available or if a finalist declines the award.
• Fulbright winners Christian Bush, Robert Gassman and Kyle Hilbrecht have a lot in common: they are all from Louisville, were college roommates, political science majors and will teach in Asia as part of their award.
• Three of the Critical Language Scholars — Tasneem Karim, Lance Gibson and Nada Kaissieh—credit Professor for igniting their interest in Arabic. Almousily was recognized in 2016 for inspiring four students to study Arabic and earn a CLS award.

Full profiles of UofL’s 2018 scholars are .��

Jeanelle Sears, Emily Cousins and Jon Phoenix, UofL graduate students, are heading to Kolkata, India, this summer as , a prominent award funded by the U.S. State Department to expand the number of Americans proficient in languages deemed to be “critical” to U.S. interest.

How did that happen? Did they already know each other? Did a faculty member encourage the students to apply for the scholarship? Do any of the students already speak Bangla?

No, no and no.

When asked how it happened that three UofL students were selected for the Bangla language program in Kolkata, CLS Indic Language Programs Officer Rhea Vance-Cheng said, “I had the exact same question. It’s definitely rare to have three students from one university at the same site.”

Sears, Cousins and Phoenix say they are just as befuddled. Phoenix speculated that the anomaly was a “super-insane coincidence,” while Sears thought having multiple Cards in the Kolkata program was “wild.”

The trio does share some similarities: all are interested in learning Bengali to expand their opportunities for research in areas such as sociology, environmentalism and writing studies. Sears and Phoenix are both sociologists from Knox County, Kentucky, while Cousins is an English studies student from Tokyo, Japan.

Once the CLS winners got over the surprise of learning that others from UofL were headed to India as part of the same program, they were all delighted.

“It’s very cool that I’ll actually be able to stay in touch with at least two other people in the program,” Phoenix said.

Sears added that having other Cards in the program offers “immediate affinity,” as well as the chance to support each other’s work once they return home.

Scholars will stay with host families in Kolkata and speak only Bengali for the duration of their stay (absolute beginners get a two-week grace period to get their skills up to snuff). The program includes daily instructional classes, extracurricular culture classes, weekly personal tutoring and occasional group excursions.

On Sept. 9, about 20 Fulbright and Critical Language Scholarship applicants gathered at Etskorn Honors Center for the Fulbright Speed Dating event. Now in its eighth year, the program lets applicants have one-on-one conversations with previous winners who look over their research proposals and offer suggestions on how to improve them.

In addition to getting a proposal tune-up, applicants receive practical advice on living and working abroad from their advisers’ firsthand experience — an opportunity many advisers themselves wish they had during their application process.

“It was different when I went through the process. For me, it was a small group of faculty who committed themselves to the process,” said 2005 Fulbright scholar Jeanelle Sears, whose work in Egypt led her to a social work career serving refugees. Knowing the importance of the Fulbright program in helping students become changemakers, she volunteered to pass along her expertise to the next generation of scholars.

“We’ve all been through this,” said Sears. “We want to help (the candidates) make their application as strong as it can be.”

Senior Kyle Vuong came to the event seeking input on his proposal to study highly infectious parasites in Geneva. His research proposal was sound, but his mentor helped him improve his purpose statement to make his proposal more attractive to the review board.

“When they read my personal statement, I want them to see a person, not just a number,” said Vuong. “Can they tell it’s someone passionate, someone who has a story to tell?”

The event is the brainchild of Patricia Condon, director of the Office of National and International Scholarship Opportunities. Condon was on hand to oversee the event and offer some advice to Fulbright hopefuls.

“For candidates, it really helps accelerate their thinking and preparation,” said Condon. “Some have said it’s the single most important thing that helped them prepare for the Fulbright interview.”

UofL was named a top producer of Fulbright scholars for the 2015-16 academic year by the Chronicle of Higher ����ֱ��. The campus deadline for next year’s winners to submit their applications is Sept. 15.

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Lucky for UofL, Jordanian native Khaldoun Almousily is exactly that type of teacher.

Although he has been at the university for just two semesters, his Arabic language classes in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Classical and Modern Languages Department have become popular and, now, four of his students have won prestigious Critical Language Scholarships (CLS) in Arabic.

The four CLS winners are , , and . All four credit Almousily’s instruction—plus his ability to weave a bit of history and culture into his curriculum—with their success in earning the award.

“He incites passion for Arabic and the Middle East in all of his students and is an incredible and patient instructor,” Pepper wrote.

Ball called Almousily “one of the most influential professors I have ever had.”

Apparently, Almousily’s penchant for teaching is a strong family trait. Two of his sisters and one brother, who still live in Jordan, are also Arabic teachers.

“I love teaching more than anything else and I love interacting with students,” Almousily said.

The is a fully funded language and cultural immersion program for college students. It is funded by the U.S. Department of State to build a larger pool of Americans who can speak foreign languages considered to be critical to the U.S. Candidates for the CLS in Arabic are required to have at least one year of college-level instruction.

Ball, a Manchester native, and Pepper, an Elizabethtown native, will both spend their CLS at Noor Majan Training Institute in Ibri, Oman.

Brawner, a Glendale native, will travel to Meknes, Morocco, and Wright, who is from Louisville, will study in Tangier, Morocco.

Almousily came to UofL in 2015 as an instructor and program coordinator of Arabic language. He previously was an interpreter/translator on state and federal levels and taught for five years at Western Kentucky University, where he was instrumental in building Kentucky’s and Western’s first major and minor in Arabic. He hopes to build a similar program for UofL.

He likes to keep students engaged in the classroom by giving them real-world, tangible experiences as they learn. He explains:

“When the unit is about things you need from a grocery store, we turn the classroom into a store were students design a shopping list and go to the market to buy several items they need for the dish they are making. When the unit is about clothing, I bring real clothes and turn the classroom into a market where students are divided into customers and salespeople. They talk about the design, materials and try to negotiate the price.”

He also likes to get students out of the classroom. He has organized field trips to an Islamic Center and has shown Arabic-speaking movies. Such approaches resonate well with students.

Wright wrote that he appreciates Almousily for “encouraging me to apply for a CLS and for really pushing me to be more comfortable speaking Arabic as opposed to just learning the material from a book.”

The CLS scholars will head to their respective destinations this summer.