2012 grads headed to Spain, Taiwan via Fulbright Scholarships

Seniors Lauren Manck and Ryan DeVries will receive their diplomas on Saturday,
May 19. Shortly thereafter, they will head east to Spain and Taiwan,
respectively. The two are recipients of prestigious Fulbright Scholarships,
awarded through the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and
Cultural Affairs.
The Fulbright Program provides faculty and students "with the opportunity to
study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute to finding
solutions to shared international concerns." (www.cies.org).
DeVries, a Chinese and political science double major, will teach English in
an ESL elementary or middle school classroom in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. He will be
working in the English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) program, which places
recent college graduates in English classrooms around the world.
"I feel blessed and privileged to have this opportunity," said DeVries.
He says he believes that earning this Fulbright would have been impossible
without the help of his Asian language professors Larry and Qin Herzberg, Asian
Studies program director Dan Bays and political science professor Joel Westra.
Manck, a chemistry major, will be studying seagrasses in Cadiz, Spain. She
will be looking at how seagrasses' production of natural products and
metabolites varies with different environmental conditions.
"Seagrasses are really important in the coastal environment. They play a large
role in the carbon cycle …,” she said. "They're also important in the
protection of the shoreline and in breeding environments for a lot of different
species."
Like DeVries, Manck is grateful for the opportunities she's had at Calvin, and
specifically to chemistry professor Doug Vander Griend, who she says got her
involved in chemical research.
"I feel incredibly blessed to be at Calvin," Manck said. "I think the faculty
have been amazing to get to know, and I don't think any of this would have been
possible without them."
Since 2004, seven Calvin students and 11 faculty members have been awarded
Fulbright Scholarships.
See full story on DeVries' Fulbright:
http://www.calvin.edu/news/archive/a-fulbright-to-teach-in-taiwan
See full story on Manck's Fulbright:
http://www.calvin.edu/news/archive/goldwater-scholar-nsf-fellow-and-now-a-fulbright
For more information on the Fulbright Scholar Program, visit
http://www.cies.org/
-end-

Matt Kucinski
Media Relations Manager
Calvin College
msk23@calvin.edu
616.526.8935 (office)
616.307.7429 (cell)
Received on Wed May 9 11:05:18 2012