CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Five University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign students and recent graduates were offered Fulbright grants to pursue international education, research and teaching experiences around the globe this coming year.
Four of the students have accepted grants from the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, which builds international relationships to help solve global challenges. This flagship international educational exchange program of the U.S. government awards grants to students based on their academic and professional achievement as well as their ambassadorial skills and leadership potential. The Fulbright student program will fund more than 2,000 U.S. citizens to live abroad for the 2025-26 academic year.
“The Fulbright is a preeminent global exchange program affording students the opportunity to experience a different culture and share their own,” said David Schug, director of the National and International Scholarships Program at Illinois. “Our Illinois recipients span from students in the hard sciences to the humanities, showcasing how the mission of the scholarship, to create mutual understanding across cultures, can be accomplished across myriad disciplines. We are so proud of these global ambassadors.”
Anthony Erkan, of Carol Stream, Ill., will teach English in Türkiye after receiving bachelor’s degrees in history and economics at Illinois this spring. Born in the U.S. to a Turkish family, the graduate of Glenbard North High School aims to use his fluency in English, Turkish and German to help students explore and understand Turkish American culture and history. Erkan’s goals following his Fulbright grant are to pursue a dual-degree master’s program at Georgetown University: a master’s in foreign service with a concentration in global politics and security from the Walsh School of Foreign Service, alongside a master’s in global, international and comparative history, with aspirations for a career in diplomacy and foreign affairs.
Nadia Hernandez, a first-generation student from Crestwood, Ill., holds a bachelor’s degree in speech and hearing science and a master’s in clinical speech language pathology from Illinois. Hernandez plans to apply her experience working with students with special education needs — which she gained through graduate internships and professional roles as a SLP — as an English teacher in Spain, where equity and inclusion are prioritized in the classroom but the resources to support that mission are sometimes limited. Upon returning from her Fulbright experience, she plans to continue her work as a speech-language pathologist with a renewed focus on supporting bilingual students while working to attract diverse individuals into the SLP profession.
David Miller, who grew up in Glencoe, Ill., and currently resides in Urbana, received his MFA in creative writing from Illinois this spring and will teach English in Romania. Miller’s professional goals include teaching at the university level, and he hopes to become a more well-rounded instructor through his Fulbright experience. He also plans to research his family’s Romanian history and use his immersion in the Romanian language as a launching point to translate the country’s rich trove of literature for English audiences.
Mia Rode, from Lake Forest, Ill., will use her Fulbright award to research gene editing therapies in Utrecht, Netherlands. Rode attended Loyola Academy and received a bachelor’s degree in molecular and cellular biology from Illinois. Her research interest lies in patient education and health care decision making. Groundbreaking new research has produced novel treatments, like a prime editing gene therapy that will serve as Rode’s research subject. These treatments provide hope for previously incurable conditions but also present new challenges in ethical patient education. After the Fulbright, she plans to attend medical school.
