This year, for the second year in a row, a Wagner student was awarded a Fulbright U.S. Student Program grant as an English Teaching Assistant. Alexandria “Allie” Sethares ’15, a business administration major, is spending 2015–16 in South Korea teaching English at a middle school. In addition, Mohammad Alauddin, professor of chemistry, received his second Fulbright grant, a specialist grant in chemistry education for Bangladesh.
Alauddin is developing curricula and faculty training at the Independent University’s Life Sciences Division in Dhaka, Bangladesh. A native of Bangladesh, Alauddin has long been engaged in applying science to the public health challenges of Bangladesh — in particular, water pollution and indoor air pollution. He taught at the University of Dhaka for a semester in 2004 on his first Fulbright grant.
“I fell down the rabbit hole of experiencing another culture through indulging in its media.”
Sethares began her year abroad in June, with a six-week intensive language and teacher training course. She will spend the academic year as a teaching assistant at Yeongheung middle school in Mokpo, about 200 miles south of Seoul.
Sethares became interested in Korean culture through an exchange student she met at her high school in East Falmouth, Massachusetts. “[She] brought me a CD copy of all the ‘K-pop’ music she owned,” Sethares recalls. “I fell down the rabbit hole of experiencing another culture through indulging in its media.”
Hearing about her teaching assignment, Sethares says, was thrilling and brings her back full circle. “This is a city surrounded by beautiful islands but still has hiking mountains, is known for its seafood, and reminds me so much of my childhood on the Cape,” she wrote on her blog.
