Two Nebraska Wesleyan students have been selected for the Fulbright Summer Institute to the United Kingdom. Emma Peterson, a sophomore athletic training and Spanish major, will participate in the US-UK Fulbright Summer Institute at the University of Bristol. Hunter Smith, a junior history major, will participate in the US-UK Fulbright Summer Institute at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland.
The Fulbright Summer Institute is one of the most prestigious and selective summer scholarship programs in the world. Sixty U.S. undergraduate students are selected for the program aimed to foster intercultural understanding between the USA and UK through educational exchange.
Peterson will participate in the “Arts, Activism and Social Justice” program where she will spend four weeks investigating how disciplines such as literature, music, visual arts, philosophy, history and critical social theory have shaped movements for social justice across the globe. The program will give particular attention to racial justice and legacies of slavery.
Her interest in the topic arose from her first-year Archway Seminar where she studied and wrote about Afghan refugees in Omaha.
“My key interest is to understand how Bristol welcomes refugees and compare it to the U.S. and UK,” said Peterson. “This program interested me because of its wide variety of topics similar to that of a liberal arts curriculum.”
Peterson is a graduate of Elkhorn South High School. She will participate in the program June 1-29.
Smith will participate in the “Education for Transformation” program, which will investigate educational philosophies in the UK and how those philosophies compare to different parts of the world. He will have hands-on experiences talking to students and educators in Northern Ireland about how their educational practices are utilized in the classroom. He will also meet with lawmakers from the British Parliament and discuss how the national public education system is shaped in the UK.
“I will incorporate what I learn in Northern Ireland in my own classroom someday, and hopefully in a school building or district farther down the road,” said Smith. “I want to become a well-rounded educator who can build lessons that are individualized for each of my students so they can find success in my classes.”
Smith is a graduate of Broken Bow High School. He will participate in the program June 24-July 19.