WINTER 2012 - National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and ...

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Mohsin Bashir academics, and administrators that in my opinion will enhance the benefits of the program for everyone. Despite being based on personal and perhaps unique experiences, I expect the benefits of this essay will go beyond research in public administration education. It is my hope that these reflections will help Fulbright recipients from Pakistan and similar countries to have some idea of what to expect from being a Fulbright-funded doctoral student in the United States. I also hope that the educators in U.S. universities can use this essay to make some sense of the context in which these students adjust to their new academic environment and how similar or dissimilar they are from their non-Fulbright peers. THE FULBRIGHT PROGRAM FOR FOREIGN STUDENTS As the title indicates, the Fulbright Program for Foreign Students (FPFS) is the subdivision of the broader Fulbright Program dealing with the inclusion of foreign students to academic programs in the United States. The Fulbright Program was established in 1946 as a result of the efforts of its namesake, Senator J. William Fulbright, to encourage academic and cultural exchanges between the United States and the rest of the world. Run by the Bureau of Education and Culture Affairs within the Department of State, FPFS is the leading international academic scholarship program, bringing in over 1,800 foreign students every year to American graduate schools (“About Fulbright,” n.d.). FPFS scholars are usually sponsored by a combination of funds from congressional appropriations to the U.S. Department of State, participating governments, and host academic institutions, and they are expected to return to their home countries upon completion of their programs. The FPFS is run through bilateral government contracts whereby either the United States embassies or bilateral organizations in participating countries administer the merit-based selection procedures and the State Department’s Institute of International Education (IIE) assists most of the scholars with admissions, finances, and immigration-related matters. Depending on the nature of the contract with the partner nations, IIE may work with other organizations in recruiting and assisting scholars in their home countries as well as the United States. FPFS in Pakistan is administered by an organization called the United States Educational Foundation in Pakistan (USEFP). Formed in 1950, USEFP is a bilateral commission that represents U.S. and Pakistani governments without being an agency of either. In addition to FPFS, the program also assists American Fulbright Scholars in Pakistan and oversees most of the U.S. government sponsored scholarship and fellowship opportunities for Pakistani students, professionals, and academics (“About USEFP”, n.d.). FPFS for Pakistan is the third largest in the world after Germany and Indonesia: 148 graduate scholars entered the United States in academic year 2008–2009 (FSB, 2009). 230 Journal of Public Affairs Education
Fulbright Program for Foreign Students BECOMING AN INTERNATIONAL FULBRIGHT SCHOLAR My Fulbright journey started as early because I decided to pursue further studies after receiving my Master of Business Administration (MBA) from a Pakistani business school. With nonprofit management already as my master’s degree focus, I wanted to advance my research in public private partnerships and the Public Administration programs in several American universities appeared to have expertise in my areas of interest. It was also clear to me that given the financial meltdown and resultant budget cuts in the United States, it would be hard for me to get an American public administration graduate school to sponsor all my academic and living costs over the 4 years or so of the program. With a lack of personal funds further complicating the situation, my only chance to accomplish my educational goal was to compete for the Fulbright scholarship. My scholarship application, therefore, was prepared not only with the rigor of a keen scholar but also with the desperation of a person with no alternatives. After going through the lengthy FPFS selection process throughout the spring and fall of 2007, including taking the mandatory standardized exams Teaching of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and Graduate Record Examination (GRE) and graduate school selection, I was awarded a scholarship to pursue a PhD in Public Administration at Arizona State University (ASU) starting in Fall 2008. FPFS would pay for my tuition, health insurance, living costs, and textbooks. While USEFP assists Pakistani Fulbright Scholars in applying for their U.S. visas, the several-weeklong process is still feared for its unpredictability. Therefore, even with an admission to a well-reputed university and federal government funding, I still was not completely sure about my ability to start my studies until I was in possession of the visa. This was ironic because I was going to study public administration in a country whose public administrators did not make a good first impression. The next few impressions were not much to speak of either; being a Pakistani citizen, I was subject to a number of lengthy and somewhat frustrating immigration and security-related procedures. An interesting observation that I made after comparing notes with some of my colleagues not funded by Fulbright was that some of them did not feel as frustrated as I was with the immigration hardships. According to them, they were looking forward to making the United States their home and felt that it was the right of the country to scrutinize as needed the people it would take in. On the other hand, bound by my Fulbright contract to go back home as soon as I finished my studies, I saw myself more as an invited guest to the United States than an applicant to enter. Therefore, in my opinion, an international Fulbright Scholar sharing my outlook can see the visa application and immigration process, combined with the uncertainty of living and academic conditions in the United States, as quite the morale sink. At the same time, this observation presents an opportunity for graduate school faculty and administration to enhance their ability to support and facilitate such students by being sensitive to this possibly weakened emotional state. Journal of Public Affairs Education 231
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JPAE VOLUME 18 NUMBER 1 JOURNAL OF
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Journal of Public Affairs Education
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FROM THE EDITOR In the symposium in
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NASPAA Presidential Address Annual
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Leading by Example: Modeling Global
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FROM THE GUEST EDITOR FROM THE GUES
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FROM THE GUEST EDITOR A SYMPOSIUM I
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on other fronts, certainly it can h
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Picasso, P. (1937). Guernica. Pictu
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A View from the 50th Street Gate on
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Reflections of a Working-Class Acad
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Reflections of a Working Class Acad
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Reflections of a Working Class Acad
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Class Rooms Kenneth Oldfield Univer
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Class Rooms although I did, but not
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Class Rooms GRADUATE SCHOOL I was u
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Class Rooms the odds this appointee
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Class Rooms The Great Leveler, too
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Class Rooms of higher learning and
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ook (Oldfield & Johnson, 2009). The
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Didactic Changes Class Rooms Pedago
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Admittedly, it will be difficult to
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hooks, b. (2000). Where we stand: C
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Shaw, G. B. (1928). The intelligent
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What’s a Girl Like You Doing in a
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What’s a Girl Like You For exampl
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What’s a Girl Like You and operat
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What’s a Girl Like You captured t
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What’s a Girl Like You full-blown
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What’s a Girl Like You inside). I
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What’s a Girl Like You and collea
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What’s a Girl Like You toward ser
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Blue-Collar Teaching in a White-Col
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Blue-Collar Teaching Half of my fam
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Blue-Collar Teaching from physics.
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Blue-Collar Teaching lifelong dream
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Blue-Collar Teaching Before him, in
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Blue-Collar Teaching One may argue
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Blue-Collar Teaching graduation in
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Blue-Collar Teaching advantages oth
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Carrizales, T. (2010). Exploring cu
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Oldfield, K. (2010). Socioeconomic
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Moving Forward by Looking Back Gary
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Moving Forward My father married my
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Moving Forward became apparent that
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Moving Forward to Duane, because he
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Moving Forward by this contaminant.
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Moving Forward quite by chance to b
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Moving Forward Federalist 51 detail
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Moving Forward their profession, in
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Moving Forward as the study shows,
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REFERENCES Ashwander v. Tennessee V
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics:
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Many researchers have explored the
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LITERATURE REVIEW Techniques in Tea
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics b
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics T
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics l
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics i
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Table 1. Downloads of Papers at Sel
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Figure 2. Expanded Model of Researc
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics o
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Figure 3. Expanded Model of Researc
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics L
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Techniques in Teaching Statistics o
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Felbinger, C. L., Holzer, M., & Whi
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Snee, R. D. (1993). What’s missin
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Are They Connected? Exploring Acade
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Exploring Academic and Social Netwo
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Figure 2. Career Advice Network Fig
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Table 1. Descriptive Statistics of
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network density, and network recipr
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Figure 5. Academic, Career Advice,
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Open Access Digital Repository: Sha
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Sharing Student Research with the W
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Table 1. Downloads of Papers at Sel
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Table 2. Top 10 Most Downloaded App
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Analysts also determined the number
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Topical categories. As shown in Tab
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negative impact on ARP downloads (
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