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Occidental Named a Top Producer of Fulbrights

Occidental's six 2009-10 Fulbright winners means it ranks

15th among all liberal arts colleges in the country, according to recent data released by the Institute of International Education, which administers the Fulbright program for the U.S. Department of State. Occidental students have won a total of 37 Fulbrights since 2003.

Occidental's current Fulbright scholars are Jessica Lobl '09, an American studies major from Rochester, Minn., working as an English teaching assistant in Spain; Rebecca de Faria Slenes '07, a diplomacy and world affairs and French double major from Campinas, Brazil, doing field research and coursework in Morocco to examine women's access to the legal system and to customary methods to resolve marital conflict; Alison Beresford '09, a native of Ramona and an English and comparative literary studies major, who is in Hungary investigating current trends in Hungarian literary language, particularly in contemporary theater; Alexander Altman '09, an urban and environmental policy major from Mill Valley who is in Ecuador studying the level of societal awareness of obesity and putting together a plan to address obesity prevention in urban areas; Amanda Lounsbury '09, a physics major from Westport, Conn., studying whether polluted surface water can be cost-effectively treated using membrane filtration units powered with photovoltaic modules in Ghana; and Caroline White '09, a biology major from Orinda working as an English teaching assistant in Taiwan.

Slenes also was awarded the Critical Language Enhancement Award to study intensive Arabic in Morocco for three months prior to her research and two months concurrent with her research.

The Fulbright program, which covers travel, education and living expenses, was established in 1946 under legislation introduced by Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas.