Fulbright celebrates “Resilience, Renewal, and Community” at NAFSA 2024

The Fulbright Program engaged with the international education community in New Orleans, Louisiana from May 27 – 31 at NAFSA’s annual conference and expo. The conference, which brings together over 10,000 educators and administrators from across the United States and the world each year, celebrated the themes of “resilience, renewal, and community” in 2024.

Preparing a new generation of international education leaders

The conference reflected the impact that Fulbright alums have had in international education as professionals and practitioners. Many Fulbrighters shared the stories of their transformative Fulbright experiences and the outcomes of their research—Fulbrighters presented 47 panels and posters throughout the conference.

Fulbrighters making an impact in the field

Fulbright alums contributed to 34 sessions and 13 poster presentations at the conference, showing the strength of the Fulbrighter community.

Adrienne Mathis, Fulbright US Student Researcher to Ecuador, interviewed Indigenous communities in the Amazon about their education needs to better advocate about school conditions to local and national governments. At the end of her Fulbright, not only was her advocacy successful in keeping an Indigenous-serving school open, but her host institution recognized her commitment to educational equity and asked her to help write a policy on sex and gender discrimination. This paved the way for her current career as Executive Director at Title IX Solutions, where she works to ensure no one is discriminated against “on the basis of sex” under federal education law in the US, which she presented on at NAFSA.

How do Fulbrighters establish successful partnerships with the local community?

During her time as a Fulbright US Student Researcher to Ecuador, Adrienne Mathis interviewed Indigenous community members in the Amazon about their education needs to better advocate school conditions to local and national governments. For Mathis, one component of a symbiotic partnership was recognizing, “This is ultimately their project. They have to carry it out in the long run. I’m there for a year to help them, but a lot of my job is to amplify their voices and support them through research.”

To read the rest of this published article please visit: https://www.fulbrightprogram.org/nafsa-2024-2/