While the Fulbright Program worldwide 
is 75 years old this year, the Czech Fulbright program has just reached 30. The last months have not been easy for an exchange program. We were able to move many of our activities on-line but the core experience, the in-person exchange, is now finally getting back to speed. We hope to be able to observe the changes in our grantees when we meet them at the very beginning of the program and then at its end.
Instead of parties and conferences, we asked many of you to become the Faces of Fulbright in our series of interviews made together with Vedator. Some of the other alumni were interviewed by Veronika Bednarova, our alumna, for the Fulbright Podcast.
Together with Lucie Žáčková, we prepared a detailed sociological survey where we asked our Czech and American alumni sets of questions relevant to their Fulbright experience.
Photo: Sociological survey report conducted for Fulbright by Lucie Žáčková, September 2021. (An image of a folder with Fulbright logo and graphs, coffee set next to the report, blue tiles in the background.)
Instead of parties and conferences, we asked many of you to become the Faces of Fulbright in our series of interviews made together with Vedator. Some of the other alumni were interviewed by Veronika Bednarova, our alumna, for the Fulbright Podcast.
Together with Lucie Žáčková, we prepared a detailed sociological survey where we asked our Czech and American alumni sets of questions relevant to their Fulbright experience.
What have we learned from our Alumni? Czechs see the Fulbright experience as an opportunity for career and professional growth, they gain new work experience. Americans value that they get to know the Czech Republic and Europe, and they also highlight the prestige of the Fulbright program and their career growth. Most respondents have built strong contacts which they keep even after their return, both professional and personal. They feel a strong connection to the country they visited as Fulbrighters, especially Americans, who feel upon their return as unofficial ambassadors of the Czech Republic in the U.S. In the survey, on of our U.S. alumni shared that: "I feel like I’m an honorary Czech citizen now. And I believe my friends and family are quite tired of me still talking about the Czech Republic two years later. But I don’t care, because I had such an overwhelmingly positive experience."
Almost all of our alumni consider a long-term stay in another country to be extremely important for understanding the world, and they recommend this experience to their colleagues, students and friends. We were happy to lean that our alumni are satisfied with the support of the Fulbright Commission before, during, and even after their stay.
Looking at statistics, males and females participate in balanced numbers, but their participation differs in various types of the programs that we offer. Junior programs have more female alumni and senior programs have more male alumni. This applies to both Czechs and Americans.
Although the Commission supports stays of whole families, even financially, female participants seem to have a more challenging time convincing their spouses to accompany them when going abroad.
Throughout the years, support of employers has been stable and high for U.S. participants and is getting higher for Czech grantees, hopefully because they see what the long term collaboration brings to the whole institution long-term.
What really warms our hearts is the fact that most of our alumni consider their Fulbright stay to be a fundamental positive point in their life, that helped them to be more open and to actively seek out opportunities to participate in public life. Many say that Fulbright was the best time of their life, a quote we used with the help of Jan Čumlivski, also our alumnus, as the theme of our memory card.
Photo: Best time of my life card designed for Fulbright by Jan Čumlivski. (A colorful card with that says: "Best time of my life" displayed on a white bookshelf.)
I would like to thank to all the Fulbright alumni (and we have over 2100 on both sides of the ocean), their family members who joined them in the adventure (and we counted almost additional 1000 of those), the host institutions, the Department of State and the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports, all the Board members who served on the Fulbright Board during the 30 years. I would like to personally thank to the staff of the Commission, past and present, for their dedication to the values of the program, which we hope to represent moving forward. If Senator Fulbright saw us today, celebrating together our anniversary, I think he would be proud of all of us who execute his original idea so well: “We must try to expand the boundaries of human wisdom, empathy and perception and there is no other way of doing that except through education.”
Let us all try to work on this not only in the coming year!
Photo: Thanksgiving meeting for American grantees, November 2021. (A group picture of current American grantees and Commission staff, indoor, two female grantees in the foreground hold a Fulbright rollup.)
Photo: Fulbright Reception at the residence of the U.S. Ambassador in Prague, September 2021. (A wide group picture in front of the residence of the U.S. Ambassador in Prague.)
Looking at statistics, males and females participate in balanced numbers, but their participation differs in various types of the programs that we offer. Junior programs have more female alumni and senior programs have more male alumni. This applies to both Czechs and Americans.
Although the Commission supports stays of whole families, even financially, female participants seem to have a more challenging time convincing their spouses to accompany them when going abroad.
Throughout the years, support of employers has been stable and high for U.S. participants and is getting higher for Czech grantees, hopefully because they see what the long term collaboration brings to the whole institution long-term.
What really warms our hearts is the fact that most of our alumni consider their Fulbright stay to be a fundamental positive point in their life, that helped them to be more open and to actively seek out opportunities to participate in public life. Many say that Fulbright was the best time of their life, a quote we used with the help of Jan Čumlivski, also our alumnus, as the theme of our memory card.
I would like to thank to all the Fulbright alumni (and we have over 2100 on both sides of the ocean), their family members who joined them in the adventure (and we counted almost additional 1000 of those), the host institutions, the Department of State and the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports, all the Board members who served on the Fulbright Board during the 30 years. I would like to personally thank to the staff of the Commission, past and present, for their dedication to the values of the program, which we hope to represent moving forward. If Senator Fulbright saw us today, celebrating together our anniversary, I think he would be proud of all of us who execute his original idea so well: “We must try to expand the boundaries of human wisdom, empathy and perception and there is no other way of doing that except through education.”
Let us all try to work on this not only in the coming year!
Hanka Ripková
More details about projects related to our anniversary available our website.