Five Temple students — including four who will be graduating this week — have won prestigious fellowships from the Fulbright U.S. Student Program to study, do research or teach English abroad in 2009-10. Only once in the university's history have more Temple students won Fulbrights in one year. The Fulbright Program, the U.S. Government’s flagship international exchange program, is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and people of other countries. Temple's latest Fulbright scholars are:

Jeff Althouse

Degree earned:

B.A., College of Liberal Arts

Major: Political science, with minors in economics and Spanish

Home town: East Stroudsburg, Pa.

Fulbright destination: Colombia

What he'll be doing there:

teaching English at a university and working with underprivileged youth.

Previous study abroad experiences: Argentina, Senegal

Reasons for focusing on Latin America: An affinity for Spanish and a quest for fluency, but also a love for Latin American culture and way of life. "It's a slower pace; people take the time to get to know one another."

Why Colombia intrigues him:
"For all the problems it has, including poverty and one of the world's largest displaced populations because of more than 30 years of war, it's one of the happiest places in the world."

Most influential Temple faculty member:

K. Orfeo Fioretos, political science.

Goals for the future:

Graduate school in political science and a career in social justice.

Antawan I. Byrd

Degree earned: B.A., Tyler School of Art

Majors: art history and art and art education

Home town: Washington, D.C.

Fulbright destination: Nigeria

What he'll be doing there: exploring the contemporary art world in and around the capital city of Lagos by working at the Centre for Contemporary Art, interviewing artists and visiting their studios.

Most influential Temple experiences: a semester abroad at Temple Rome and an internship at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where he discovered the work of Beauford Delaney, the first African-American artist whose oeuvre Byrd had ever seen at a major museum.

Current gig: an internship at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.

Goals for the future: "I am interested in investigating new ways to explore and legitimize non-Western art…I see myself oscillating between museums and the academy — as both a curator and a professor — with an emphasis on discourses in contemporary African art."

Diana Denega

Degree earned: B.A., College of Education, plus graduate certification in teaching English as a second language

Major: early childhood education

Home town: Philadelphia

Fulbright destination: Germany

What she'll be doing there:

Teaching English as a second language to middle or high-school-age students and exploring how Germans learn English.

Why returning to Germany has personal meaning:

It's an opportunity to reconnect with relatives she never knew existed until she was invited there to meet them in high school.

Languages spoken:

English, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, some Russian — and just starting Dutch.

Most influential Temple faculty member:

Margaret Devinney, co-chair of German, with whom Denega pursued independent study, translating German texts into English.

Goals for the future:

"I want to teach English and see where that takes me, and I want to translate. I really love languages — I could keep learning them all the time."

D. Brad Lanute

Degree earned: B.A., College of Liberal Arts

Major: economics

Home town: West Chester, Pa.

Fulbright destination: Finland

What he'll be doing there:

Coursework and research at the University of Tampere with an emphasis on environmental science and weighing the economic impacts of global climate change.

Why the trip will be a milestone:

It will be his first time abroad.

Why research in Scandinavia is appealing:

The region's progressive and interdisciplinary approach to environmental research and policy — and an opportunity to explore a different natural setting.

Most influential Temple faculty member:

Philosopher Charles Dyke, who exposed Lanute to the intersection of philosophy and the environment and to the work of Finnish scholars.

Alter ego:

Bassist for two local indie-rock bands, K-Bar-T and Bird Currency.

Brendan Mulvhill

Degree earned: B.A., College of Liberal Arts (majoring in German), 2008

Current gig: M.Ed. candidate, College of Education, where he's also pursuing a certificate in teaching English as a second language.

Home town: Philadelphia

Fulbright destination: Russia

What he'll be doing there:
Teaching
English at the Polytechnic University of Tomsk in Western Siberia and conducting research on the aesthetics of language learning — particularly the use of comic books as a language instruction tool.

How his research will affect his packing:

"It gives me an excuse to bring a whole bunch of comic books to Russia."

Most influential Temple classes:

Istvan Varkonyi's "The Literature and Culture of Central Europe," which got Mulvihill into Slavic literature; and a 10-credit Russian language course taught by Benjamin Rifkin.