BGSU student to receive Fulbright scholarship

Sarah Ford, a BGSU student from Delaware, Ohio, has been selected as a Fulbright student grantee to Russia by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

Sarah Ford

Ford is one of only five students from the United States chosen to go to Russia and the first BGSU undergraduate student ever to receive a Fulbright grant.

The Fulbright Program promotes mutual understanding between the people of the United States and those in other countries through academic and bicultural exchange. More than 150 countries currently participate in the program.

Ford, a German and Russian linguistics major, has a 3.89 grade point average. She is a member of the University's German Club, Russian Club, Delta Phi Alpha national German honor society and Cross Cultural Communication Connection, a BGSU project that pairs native English-speaking students with foreign graduate and undergraduate students to help develop and improve their English language skills. She also volunteers at an after-school mentoring program.

Ford is no stranger to Germany and Russia. She spent eight weeks living with a family in Germany in the summer of 1999 and organized her own independent home-stay with a German family from September 2000 to May 2001. She also participated in a five-week BGSU study-abroad program in St. Petersburg, Russia, in the summer of 2003 and attended the University of Hamburg in Germany as an exchange student from October 2003 until July 2004.

While in Russia on the Fulbright scholarship, Ford plans to teach English in a Russian school. In addition to teaching, she hopes to do an independent oral history project focusing on approaches to education and teaching in Russia and how both of these have evolved in the last decade since the fall of communism.

Fulbright grants are made possible through funds appropriated annually by Congress and, in many cases, by contributions from partner countries and/or the private sector.

As a Fulbright scholarship recipient, Ford will join the ranks of more than 265,000 alumni of the program, including 35 Nobel Prize winners.