Successful scholar
Student given one of 35 Fulbright Scholarships

Skiff Staff

Mahatma Gandhi said people must represent the changes they want to see made in the world. The lifestyle of Fulbright Scholar Amy Thompson reflects this philosophy, said her mother, Barbara Thompson.

Amy Thompson, a senior French major, recently received the scholarship awarded by the French Ministry of Education. She is one of 35 students awarded a teacher assistantship scholarship from a pool of 263 national applications submitted by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

A chancellor’s scholarship recipient, Amy Thompson said she began planning for the application process during her freshman year after an honor’s program information session.

Kathryne McDorman, director of the honors program, said most students fail to succeed in the application process for the most prestigious scholarships because they don’t spend a fair amount of time on the application.

“Many students wait until the last few weeks before it is due, and you can’t do that,” McDorman said.

Tim Cox/SKIFF STAFF Amy Thompson, a senior French major, recently received the Fulbright Scholar award from the French Ministry of Education.

In preparation for the Fulbright Scholarship, Thompson taught English to French-speaking high school and elementary students in Paris, France, during her junior year.

“The teacher that I was assisting didn’t speak English,” Thompson said. “The elementary students didn’t have any English background at all.”
Thompson said she taught the students everything from their ABCs to reading novels like “Animal Farm.”

“It was neat to see them progress to simple sentence structure,” Thompson said.

McDorman said that since Thompson was already fluent in French, she was already a step ahead of the competition.

“For many students, language is an issue in the application process,” McDorman said. “If you have fluency in a language, you are already two-thirds ahead of the game.”

Upon returning from France, Thompson started more work on the application process. She said she revised her essay 10 to 15 times.

“At first, I was in told it was terrible and to start over,” Thompson said. “I have written a lot essays, and it was frustrating for me. I used to jokingly tell my friends that I received three hours class credit called Fulbright.”

Sharon Fairchild, an associate French professor, said she believed Thompson was well qualified for the scholarship.

“She is extremely independent and highly motivated,” Fairchild said, “She has broad interest, and dedicates herself to her work with a lot of enthusiasm.”

Thompson said that through the scholarship and study abroad experiences, she wants to promote international understanding.

“Many people never venture outside of their comfort zones,” she said. “My parents have given me the confidence to succeed in things that I don’t know about. I want to give that same feeling of hope to others by sharing my understanding of the process to learn a second language.”

Thompson said she will pursue a Ph.D. in linguistics — the study of the structure of languages and how they relate to each other — and eventually teach English as a second language.

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