Fulbright Reality Czech

Elise Wright is an English Teaching Assistant. During this academic year, she teaches English at Gymnázium Jakuba Škody in Přerov, a town of 42 thousand, located in the Olomouc Region, in the eastern part of the Czech Republic. With an MA in Liberal arts studies, a goal to become a European history teacher and a life-long passion for running, Elise was placed at a general college-preparatory high school. Throughout the school year, however, Elise has discovered another passion - when traveling across the county, mostly by train, she has developed a habit of sketching the places that she wanted to keep in her mind. When Elise shared some of her sketches at the Fulbright mid-year conference, her fellow grantees were amazed by her talent. Later in the year, Elise hosted a painting workshop at a school of her fellow Fulbrighter Bea Voorhees in Ledeč nad Sázavou. Dozens of students managed to paint a “typical Czech countryside” within a regular 45-minutes long lesson. Their results were qu...

Mandy Lee is an artist and architect. In 2022/2023, she spent nine months in the Czech Republic, exploring the evolution of making and conceptualization of Czech glass from 1948 until today. In September, Mandy came to the Tomáš Baťa University in Zlín from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. Her local Fulbright mentor and guide Petr Stanický , a Fulbright alumnus himself, currently heads the Glass Department at Univerzita Tomáše Bati in Zlín, and he was an invaluable source of information, inspiration, as well as tips for further exploration of various glass traditions all over the country. Throughout her stay, Mandy traveled extensively to research and compare various glass making techniques in “Crystal Valley” in northern Bohemia, Karlovy Vary, Janštejn, Valašské Meziříčí, among many others. She created a body of work in response to her travels. When comparing the Czech and American glass scene, Mandy shares that: “Something that really stands out to me is the differen...

Elinor Grage is an actress. This  past academic year, she has served as an English Teaching Assistant at a Catholic High School located in a gorgeous town of 7000 inhabitants called Odry. Her host school prepares mostly female students for future careers as kindergarten teachers, teaching assistants, social workers, nurses and massage therapists. True to her passion for acting, Elinor included acting experiences in her everyday English classroom, discovering that acting, teaching and learning a foreign language complement each other surprisingly well. After school, Elinor has met her students and colleagues in a tutoring club, in a crafts club and in a Czech class. Reflecting on her 10 months far away from her home, Elinor admits that there were times when she was homesick, but, at the same time, she felt overwhelmed with kindness. Her students invited her to their towns, teachers kept her busy with weekend trips, and she did some special activity with her Czech mentor at leas...

Audra Hamlin is a filmmaker. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, Audra is spending the current Spring semester 2023 at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, where she studies cinematography and film. Audra fell in love with making videos as a child. She now continues to fulfill her childhood dreams as a student at the legendary FAMU [Film and TV School] - "one of the top film schools in Europe known as the Hollywood of Europe for its innovative film making past..." In Audra's opinion, "Czech films are full of black humor which is reflective of the humor here, and it makes me more aware of how we use where we are from and how we go about saying something." The Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship Program is one of the U.S. State Department scholarship programs; it enables students of limited financial means to study or intern abroad in order to provide them with skills critical to U.S. national security and economic prosperity. Thi...