Smith Celebrates Fulbright Award Winners

Maseeh Roshan

Micheline Tocco

Two Smith School graduating seniors, Maseeh Roshan and Micheline Tocco, will be teaching—and dancing, and playing lacrosse--in Spain next year as winners of prestigious Fulbright English Teaching Assistantships (ETA) for 2011-12. The Fulbright Scholars program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. Roshan, an accounting and finance double major, hopes to eventually focus on international contract law after his year in Spain. Tocco, an international business major and Spanish minor, is a long-time student of Spanish who hopes teach the language at the elementary or secondary level in the future.

Roshan and Tocco are among nine University of Maryland students who have received Fulbright Awards so far this year. Last year, 13 University of Maryland students received Fulbright awards.

“This was a very good year for Smith School students studying Spanish! With only a 19% acceptance rate, Fulbright teaching opportunities in Spain are highly competitive,” said Francis DuVinage, director of the National Scholarships Office and Maryland Center for Undergraduate Research. “Nationally there are about 9,000 applicants.”

DuVinage says that both Roshan and Tocco have the key attributes the Fulbright Program looks for in their grantees: initiative and a desire to connect with people from other cultures. Both participated in one of the university’s international study programs to Spain—Tocco in Barcelona, and Roshan in Madrid. Tocco, who is a College Park Scholar in the arts program, has been a dance instructor and is on a competitive dance team at Maryland. Roshan has previous experience teaching English in Afghanistan, and when he was in Valencia he collaborated with local residents to set up a lacrosse club. Those kinds of experiences make students more attractive to the program, says DuVinage.

As ETAs, Roshan and Tocco will spend the year with populations that do not traditionally have access to native English speakers and may not have interacted with people from the United States before. They will help local teachers strengthen their English language education programs while also increasing cultural knowledge of the United States. Roshan and Tocco may lead programs in language labs, conduct English conversation clubs, tutor, participate in sports, language, and drama clubs, and volunteer at local organizations, such as hospitals.

Living and working in Spain will offer Roshan and Tocco the opportunity to improve their language skills and knowledge of Spanish culture, while offering their own unique talents to their host communities.

Tocco plans to use her dance background to lead an afterschool dance class in Spain. “The whole point of the Fulbright program is cultural exchange, and dance is such a unique part of a culture,” she says. “I know I can bring something from here, and bring something back with me too.”

Roshan plans to set up a lacrosse club in Madrid for young people, echoing his earlier experience in Valencia. “I guess they’ll be our rivals now,” Roshan says. He was offered a job with KPMG but is asking them to let him defer acceptance for a year, hoping KPMG will value the experiences and language skills he gains during his time in Spain. “This award opens up so many doors for me,” says Roshan. “It will make so many more things possible in my future.”

The Fulbright program was established in 1946 by the U.S. Congress to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. The program has provided thousands of students - chosen for their academic merit and leadership potential - with the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.

For more information about the Fulbright Awards, visit www.scholarships.umd.edu/scholarships/fulbright7.html.