Sika Essegbey '23, Ella Rose '23 and Camilo Toruño '21 have been awarded Fulbrights for the 2022-23 cycle. Essegbey will be a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Colombia, Rosa has won a Fulbright for research in Chile and Toruño's Fulbright Graduate Study Award will support his work toward a master's degree in Migration Studies at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City.
Essegbey, a Class of 2023 Spanish and Black Studies double major, will be collaborating with a lead instructor to support university students in their English learning in Colombia. Some of her responsibilities for this role include formulating lesson plans and activities to support academic instruction while also facilitating cultural exchange. In addition to her work inside the classroom, Essegbey will be volunteering with a local education nonprofit to tutor secondary school students as part of her social project. Because she wasn’t able to study abroad, Essegbey writes that she is "beyond excited to have this opportunity to immerse myself in Colombian culture and continue my journey as a Spanish learner."
A Spanish and Biology double major, Ella Rose will be working with an affiliate at Universidad de Concepción in Concepción, Chile. They will be studying blue whales in the wild, and then incorporating them into a biological model that the affiliate developed of an area with threatened fish populations. Ella's goal is to assess whether blue whale population numbers can be indicators of imminent declines in these fish populations.
After graduating from Amherst in 2021 with a Spanish and English double major, Toruño has worked in New York City as a bilingual paralegal at the New York Legal Assistance Group (NYLAG) in the Tenants' Rights Unit. While at NYLAG, he has assisted tenants facing eviction, many of whom are Spanish speaking immigrants, and learned about housing rights in New York City. This direct client work drew parallels with Toruño's undergraduate research for the Spanish major on asylum narratives and volunteer work with pro se asylum applicants and the border rights organization Al Otro Lado. The desire to bridge the gap between client facing work and academia motivated Toruño to apply for a Graduate Study Award with the Fulbright Program. Next year, with this award, Toruño will be attending the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City to begin a Migration Studies master degree.