{"id":19064,"date":"2013-05-20T13:43:51","date_gmt":"2013-05-20T20:43:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stage.headlessnauedu-b6hgdzckfdgxgzhe.westus-01.azurewebsites.net\/?p=19064"},"modified":"2013-05-21T12:11:58","modified_gmt":"2013-05-21T19:11:58","slug":"students-win-fulbright-honors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/students-win-fulbright-honors\/","title":{"rendered":"Students win Fulbright honors"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hesham
Hesham Elnagar, left, will spend the next academic year as an English teaching assistant in Jordan after being selected for the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. Alexandra Keller is heading to Mexico for a year as part of the cultural teaching exchange program.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Two graduate students are packing their bags for a year teaching abroad after recently being awarded international grants from the\u00a0prestigious Fulbright U.S. Student Program<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hesham Elnagar<\/b>, a graduate student in the Master\u2019s of Sustainable Communities program,\u00a0will spend the next academic year as an English teaching assistant in Jordan, while Alexandra Keller<\/b>, a graduate student in biology, is heading to Mexico as part of the cultural teaching exchange program.<\/p>\n

As Fulbright teaching assistants, the two will help teach English while serving as cultural ambassadors for the United States. They also will meet, work, live with and learn from the people of their host countries.<\/p>\n

Elnagar earned his NAU bachelor\u2019s degree in music in 2009, following a decorated undergraduate career<\/a>.\u00a0He kicked off his graduate studies with an impressive scholarship<\/a> through the National Society of Collegiate Scholars and spent last summer in Tunisia as a U.S. Dept. of State Critical Language Scholar. He\u00a0has compiled a notable r\u00e9sum\u00e9 for teaching in locations around the world\u2014from Flagstaff and the Havasupai Native American Reservation, to Chicago, Baltimore, New Zealand and Fiji. He\u2019s also traveled to Peru, the United Arab Emirates and the Cook Islands, where he\u2019s given more than 50 lectures on topics such as art and activism, American culture and society, educational sustainability and global immigration.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis exchange will be an opportunity to practice and advance my language and dialect skills while also learning about Jordan\u2019s immigrant populations,\u201d Elnagar said. \u201cWhen not teaching and studying, I hope to conduct small-scale ethnographic research projects with organizations working with immigrants and refugees.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keller expressed a similar passion for the pursuit of teaching that incorporates multicultural perspectives. After receiving her bachelor\u2019s degree in international affairs from NAU in 2006, Keller\u2019s fascination with Latin American culture\u2014and specifically the social movements of the region\u2014led her to Central and South America, where she spent a summer traveling from Guatemala to Colombia. The trip, she said, solidified her love for the culture and people in the region.<\/p>\n

She returned to the U.S. to pursue a rigorous graduate program in molecular biology, earning a graduate fellowship with the National Science Foundation and teaching STEM education to sixth graders. While excelling as a researcher and scholar, her passion for teaching prevails. The Fulbright program, she said, will help her bring an understanding of Mexican language, community and culture back to the classroom in the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy goal is to create a classroom culture that supports students from all walks of life and where our past experiences are a welcomed and critical part of the learning process,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Matt Petney<\/strong>, who this month earned his NAU bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, was selected as an alternate for the Fulbright\u00a0U.S. Student Program. In the event one of the program’s 1,900 students withdraws or additional funding becomes available, Petney may be headed to Bolivia, where he proposed a project in collaboration with a prosthetics clinic to improve\u00a0the design of prosthetic feet and ankles for amputees in La Paz.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two graduate students are packing their bags for a year teaching abroad after recently being awarded international grants from the\u00a0prestigious Fulbright U.S. Student Program. Hesham Elnagar, a graduate student in the Master\u2019s of Sustainable Communities program,\u00a0will spend the next academic year as an English teaching assistant in Jordan, while Alexandra Keller, a graduate student in…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":20036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-community"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}