The College of Arts & Letters had 22 students selected as finalists for the 2022-23 Fulbright U.S. Student Program. Established in 1946, the Fulbright U.S. Student Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international exchange program, assisting graduate and undergraduate students with pursuing graduate study, teaching English or researching abroad.
Notre Dame alumna Geraldine Mukumbi has been named a 2022 Knight-Hennessy Scholar. She is Notre Dame’s second consecutive Knight-Hennessy Scholar and third in the past four years. An English and Africana studies major, she will now pursue a doctorate in curriculum studies and teacher education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. She is interested in interventions in the English classroom that can inspire students to be lifelong readers — particularly, the role that young adult fiction can play in improving the quality of literacy for multilingual students.
The juniors, chosen from among nearly 900 applicants nationwide, are Notre Dame's second and third Phi Beta Kappa Key into Public Service Scholars. They'll each receive a $5,000 undergraduate scholarship. Miguel Coste is a neuroscience and behavior major in the College of Arts and Letters from Tampa, Florida. Noelle Dana is a classics and philosophy major, with a concentration in philosophy, science and mathematics, and a business economics and Hesburgh Program in Public Service minor from Hampden, Maine.
The University of Notre Dame is among the top producers of Fulbright Program students for the eighth consecutive year, according to the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which administers the Fulbright Program on behalf of the U.S. Department of State. Among research institutions, the University finished second with 26 Fulbright recipients for the 2021-22 academic year, tied with Georgetown and Harvard and ahead of Princeton, Columbia, Stanford, and Yale.
Among Notre Dame's 26 recipients were 20 Arts & Letters undergraduates, graduate students, and alumni — meaning the College of Arts & Letters produced more Fulbright winners than Penn, the University of Chicago, Michigan, Northwestern, New York University, Johns Hopkins, MIT, and Duke.
Two groups of Notre Dame students — one affiliated with the Washington Program and the other with the nonpartisan Student Policy Network — did significant research on allegations against two Maltese officials and the daughter of the former Angolan president, which they submitted to the Departments of State and Treasury in 2020. It's rare for undergraduates to be involved in such significant legal work — and in December, the State Department issued sanctions against all three officials the Notre Dame students spent an "immense amount of time" researching.
Notre Dame senior Trevor Lwere will pursue a Master of Global Affairs in Beijing next year as a member of the Schwarzman Scholar Class of 2023. A native of Kampala, Uganda, he is one of 151 Schwarzman Scholars from a pool of nearly 3,000 applicants from around the globe. He is Notre Dame’s first Schwarzman Scholar since the program was established in 2016. Lwere is an economics major and philosophy, politics and economics minor, with a supplementary major in global affairs. He is a member of the Hesburgh-Yusko Scholars Program, the Glynn Family Honors Program and the Kellogg Institute International Scholars Program.
Offered through the Department of Political Science, the Hesburgh Program in Public Service, the Constitutional Studies minor, and the Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government, Philanthropy and the Common Good is an experiential course that offers students the opportunity to engage with local nonprofits while learning about the history and role of philanthropy in the U.S. Students in the class this semester awarded grants totaling $78,600 to five organizations during a ceremony on the National Day of Giving.
Notre Dame alumna MacKenzie Isaac ’20 will study at the University of Oxford in England next year as a member of the U.S. Rhodes Scholar Class of 2022. She is one of 32 Rhodes Scholars selected from a pool of 826 candidates this year, and is Notre Dame’s 21st Rhodes Scholar overall and fourth in the past five years. She graduated in 2020 with a Bachelor of Arts in sociology, minoring in data science and Latino studies.
The University of Notre Dame has been recognized by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs as a top producer of Gilman Scholars over the past 20 years among “medium” institutions based on enrollment.
Shaun Evans, a doctoral candidate in theology at the University of Notre Dame, has been named a 2021 Lilly Graduate Fellow. He is one of 10 Lilly Graduate Fellows from a pool of more than 60 applicants nationwide. Established with a grant from the Lilly Endowment and based at Christ College, the interdisciplinary honors college at Valparaiso University, the Lilly Graduate Fellows Program supports exceptionally well qualified young people who have bachelor’s degrees from Lilly Fellowship Program Network Schools and who are interested in becoming teacher-scholars at church-related colleges and universities in the U.S.
Notre Dame junior John “Jack” Boland has been awarded a 2021 Phi Beta Kappa Key into Public Service Scholarship for his academic excellence, leadership and commitment to public service. Boland — a political science major and philosophy, politics, and economics minor from Herndon, Virginia — is one of 20 sophomores and juniors from Phi Beta Kappa institutions selected for the award from more than 800 applicants.
Twenty-six University of Notre Dame students and alumni — including 21 from the College of Arts & Letters — have been awarded Fulbright U.S. Student Program grants to teach or study abroad during the 2021-22 academic year. Notre Dame has been a top producer of Fulbright students for seven consecutive years.
Notre Dame senior Augustine Pasin will study at the Yenching Academy of Peking University next year as one of 117 global Yenching Scholars. He is Notre Dame’s seventh Yenching Scholar since 2017. Yenching Scholars participate in an interdisciplinary master’s degree program in China studies at Yenching Academy, a postgraduate college of Peking University that brings together young people with a demonstrated talent for leadership and innovation.
Notre Dame juniors Tarik Brown and Gregory Miller have been named 2021 Truman Scholars, becoming the University’s 10th and 11th Truman Scholars since 2010. Brown and Miller are among 62 recipients of the award from a pool of more than 840 candidates. They were recommended by 17 independent selection panels based on their academic success and leadership and likelihood of becoming public service leaders. Brown is a computer science major and Hesburgh Program in Public Service minor and Miller is an economics and applied and computational mathematics and statistics major and a Hesburgh Program in Public Service and constitutional studies minor.
With 29 finalists — including 24 from the College of Arts & Letters — Notre Dame ranked 7th this year in a tie with New York University, according to the U.S. State Department, which administers the Fulbright Program via the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
Seven Notre Dame students with majors or minors in the College of Arts & Letters have been awarded spring Gilman Scholarships to study abroad, for a total of 15 students so far for the 2020-21 academic year. Two Notre Dame students, both Arts & Letters majors, have been named alternates for the award.
Retired Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Alan Page, a 1967 University of Notre Dame graduate and the first African American justice to serve on Minnesota’s highest court, will join G. Marcus Cole, the Joseph A. Matson Dean of Notre Dame Law School, for a virtual “fireside chat” at noon Jan. 18 (Monday) as part of the University’s commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
A small but growing number of tenure-track faculty have roots in Multicultural Student Programs and Services (MSPS), a program of the Division of Student Affairs at Notre Dame that provides access to opportunities and resources for historically underrepresented students to thrive at Notre Dame and beyond. “Because of MSPS, I was lucky enough to have professors that took an interest in me and pointed me in the right direction to come to the idea that graduate school was something that I could do,” said Camille Suarez, a 2013 Arts & Letters graduate.
Twenty-six University of Notre Dame students and alumni — including 20 from the College of Arts and Letters — have been awarded Fulbright U.S. Student Program grants to teach or study abroad during the 2020-21 academic year. Notre Dame has been a top producer of Fulbright students for six consecutive years.
Notre Dame junior Patrick Hidalgo McCabe has been named a 2020 Truman Scholar, becoming the ninth Notre Dame student selected for the award since 2010 — a list that includes three eventual Rhodes Scholars. McCabe is a political science and Arabic major with a minor in peace studies from Vienna, Virginia. He is a Hesburgh-Yusko Scholar, a Kellogg International Scholar, a Glynn Family Honors Scholar and a Boren Scholar.
Students, parents of students, alumni, faculty and staff, have donated nearly $40,000 toward the coronavirus response in St. Joseph County — specifically for personal protective equipment (PPE) for health workers and others who may come into close contact with the virus.
Three University of Notre Dame students, juniors Leah Harmon, Alex Kokot and Theodore MacMillan, have been named Goldwater Scholars for the 2020-2021 academic year, the most for the University in a single year.
The University of Notre Dame is donating personal protective equipment from labs across the University in response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has led to a shortage of such equipment among local doctors, nurses and first responders on the front lines of the outbreak. Labs across campus are donating gloves, masks, face shields, goggles, isolation gowns and other personal protective equipment for delivery to St. Joseph County Unified Command. In addition, Liang Cai, an assistant professor of history, is organizing the donation of personal protective equipment from China with help from Notre Dame alumni and the parents of Notre Dame students in that country.
University of Notre Dame alumna Ashley Zhou will study medical science at the University of Cambridge this fall as a member of the Gates Cambridge Scholar class of 2020. Zhou is a 2019 Notre Dame graduate from Gaithersburg, Maryland. She received a bachelor of arts degree in neuroscience and behavior and minored in innovation and entrepreneurship.
Notre Dame was 23rd among all research institutions with 15 Fulbright students for the current academic year, according to results published Monday (Feb. 10) in The Chronicle of Higher Education. In applying for the award, student winners worked closely with the Graduate School’s Office of Grants and Fellowships or the Flatley Center for Undergraduate Scholarly Engagement (CUSE).
Four students in Notre Dame's College of Arts and Letters will study abroad next semester as Gilman Scholars, all through Notre Dame International.
University of Notre Dame senior Prathm Juneja has been named to the United States Rhodes Scholar Class of 2020. Juneja, of Edison, New Jersey, is Notre Dame’s 20th Rhodes Scholar and the 14th from the College of Arts and Letters — including four in the past six years — and will commence his studies in Oxford in October.
When theology and Arts and Letters pre-health alumnus Andy Miles took a job teaching math and science, he returned to not just to the middle school — on its own, a place of considerable influence with regard to his intersecting views on education and the faith — but to the very classroom he helped renovate as an undergraduate.
As sworn investigators, the interns — including five from the College of Arts and Letters — will assist with a variety of tasks, from analyzing evidence and assisting with search warrants to testifying at trial.
Maria McKenna and Richard Pierce have been appointed co-directors of the AnBryce Scholars Initiative at the University of Notre Dame, a scholar leaders program supporting first-generation college students who demonstrate great promise in the face of challenging life circumstances.