Todd Abbott, a 2019 graduate of international business, marketing, politics, and Spanish, has been selected for a Fulbright award and will spend 2020 in Malaysia as an English Teaching Assistant. While preparing for the grant period, Todd is serving as a fellow with the economic development ministry of HOPE International and has been splitting time between their offices in Congo, Lancaster, Malawi, Rwanda, and Zimbabwe. At Messiah, Todd was heavily involved in campus life through the admissions office, ambassador program, college honors program, musical theatre department, recreational sports league, and student government association, with whom he served as the 2018-2019 student body president. Todd is originally from Fabius, New York.
Learn more about the Fulbright scholarship
Haley Clasen (Politics and Economics, ’19) received a Critical Language Scholarship to study Arabic in the Middle East in the summer of 2019. The Critical Language Scholarship is a State Department program designed to allow American college and university students to learn languages essential to America’s engagement with the world. Haley looks forward to how her increasing Arabic language capabilities will allow her to connect to those around her, at home and abroad.
Christopher Beardsley, a 2016 B.A. History graduate (concentration American history) with minors in Education and Psychology finished his two years of service with Peace Corps Rwanda as a TEFL Lecturer and Teacher Trainer. In completion of his service, he became TEFL certified through Peace Corps and the Center for Applied Linguistics in D.C. He recently accepted a Fulbright award to teach English in South Africa at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein. Chris has spent the past year visiting gayborhoods throughout the U.S. and documenting his experiences in honor of Stonewall’s 50th anniversary. Chris hopes to utilize these insights to better understand policy-making at home and abroad.
Christina McIntyre (2016), a Politics and International Relations major, with further majors in Sustainability Studies and Community and Urban Development, is using her 2016-17 Fulbright research award to Canada to study for an MA in Political Science at the University of Toronto. Her MA thesis, which took shape as part of Christian’s senior honors project at Messiah, will focus on urban housing policy as a means of poverty de-concentration . Christina is from Street, Maryland.
Timothy Sensenig (2015) majored in English and German with teaching certificates and is a former Messiah College Student Body President. Having studied abroad in Germany through Messiah's Intercultural Office, he will be returning in 2016-2017 to tenure a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) grant in Hamburg. Sensenig grew up in northern Lancaster County in central Pennsylvania.
Jeffrey Stiles ('16), a politics and Chinese studies major, will use his Boren Scholarship to study Mandarin at Shanghai International Studies University for the 2014-2015 school year. Born in Lima, Peru, Stiles is fluent in Spanish and spent the spring semester of his sophomore year studying Spanish politics, history, and law at the University of Barcelona. At Messiah, he is active in the Chinese Club, where he serves as co-president, the Collaboratory (Economic Empowerment Group), and the student ambassador program.
Malcolm McDermond, senior sociology and anthropology and Biblical and
religious studies major has been selected for a Fulbright U.S. Student
award for 2013-2014. He will tenure his award in Malaysia where he will
hold an English Teaching Assistantship (ETA). ETAs place Fulbrighters in
a classroom abroad to provide assistance to teachers of English to
non-native English-speakers.
A native of Henan Province, China, Xu Ren (’12, Politics) immigrated
to the US in 1998. In 2010-11, Xu returned to China to study at the
Dongbei University of Finance and Economics in Dalian, where he
developed the preliminary idea for his senior thesis on the ability of
social media to advance liberal democratic values and behaviors in
China. From 2012-13, Xu will be working in Washington DC as a research
fellow in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Asia
Program, focusing on US-China relations.
An immigrant from South Africa and fluent in four languages, Bianca
Basch ('12, Biology) nurtured her passion for international development
by using her Boren award to live, study and intern in Thailand in
2010-11. The experience inspired her senior honors project on
vermicomposting. Her thesis aims to determine if alternative waste
management strategies, namely vermicomposting, can be used to divert
waste naturally rather than paying for its removal. Basch hopes to
return to Thailand to continue working in sustainable agriculture
A native of Portland, Oregon, Jennica Sehorn ('07, Foreign
Languages), pictured on the far right, won a Fulbright Scholarship to
Turkey for 2007-08. She spent the year teaching English conversation
classes at Bilkent University in Ankara. In May 2011 Jennica completed
her Master's of Arts degree at Georgetown in Latin American Studies
with a concentration in Refugee and Humanitarian Emergencies. Currently
she is an Executive Assistant at the Kakenya Center for Excellence in
Washington DC. Through promoting the education of young Kenyan women,
the Center works to end female genital mutilation and early forced
marriage in Maasai communities.
After graduating from Messiah ('05, Politics), Jamie joined the
Teach For America program in Camden, New Jersey, where she taught for
two years in one of the lowest income neighborhoods in the country.
While teaching, she became aware of the extent to which public policy
impacts public schools, teachers, and students. She decided to use her
Truman award to enroll in the Master's of Public Administration program
at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International
Affairs, where she specialized in domestic and urban policy, and from
which she graduated with distinction in 2009. Subsequently, Jamie moved
back to her home state of Ohio and began working with the Thomas B.
Fordham Institute, a think tank dedicated to advancing educational
excellence. In early 2012, she joined the Ohio Council of Community
Schools as a Communications Strategist.
Carmen McCain, ('99, English) was Fulbright Fellow to Nigeria in
2001-2002. Currently she is a PhD Candidate in the Department of
African Languages and Literature at the University of Wisconsin,
Madison. Her thesis focusses on the Nigerian film industry, with an
emphasis on political discourse in Hausa-language film, literature, and
music. In 2008 Carmen returned to Nigeria to carry out full-time
doctoral research, work that has been funded by the Ebrahim Hussein
Fellowship for the Study of African Literature and by a Fulbright-Hays
grant. Since October 2010, she has also been a columnist with the
Nigerian national paper, Weekly Trust.
Rebecca Gambler is an Acting Director in the U.S. Government
Accountability Office’s (GAO) Homeland Security and Justice Team, where
she leads GAO’s work on border security and immigration issues. Ms.
Gambler joined GAO in 2002 and has worked on a wide range of issues
related to homeland security and justice, including border security,
immigration, and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) management and
transformation. In particular, Ms. Gambler has led high-profile,
comprehensive reviews of DHS’s progress in implementing its mission and
management functions to coincide with the department’s 4-year
anniversary and the 10-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Prior to joining GAO, Ms. Gambler worked at the National Endowment for
Democracy’s International Forum for Democratic Studies. Ms. Gambler has
an M.A. in national security and strategic studies from the United
States Naval War College, an M.A. in international relations from
Syracuse University, and an M.A. in political science from the
University of Toronto. She was a Fulbright Fellow to Canada from
1999-2000. Ms. Gambler has a B.A. in political science from Messiah
College.
Joy Yu-Ho Wang ('98, English and Politics) received her D.Phil. in
post-colonial studies from Oxford University in 2005. After a brief
period teaching literature at the City University of New York, Joy
decided to change vocational direction. In 2010 she graduated with a
J.D. from Harvard Law School. Presently she is a public defender with
the Legal Aid Society in New York City.