Current Grantees

Current Grantees In October 2008, Maximino Mafla Arango (OAS, Colombia) was invited by the Alexander von Humbolt Foundation to present his research on citizen participation at the Humbolt Kolleg Conferencia International. The foundation is a German government organization that provides support to foreign scientists and scholars to conduct research in Germany. The theme of the conference, held at the Univ. Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile, was Republicanism and the Theory of Government. During Mafla’s session, he discussed how increasing citizen participation through institutional mechanisms in Colombia can serve as a model for social change in Latin America. He is pursuing a doctoral degree in public administration at the Pontificia Univ. Católica de Valparaíso in Valparaíso, Chile.

In May 2008, Hernán Camilo Rocha Niño (COLCIENCIAS III, Colombia), a doctoral degree candidate in computer science at the Univ. of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, was awarded a six-week internship at the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA) in Hampton, Virginia. NIA is a nonprofit research institute formed by a consortium of universities to foster productive collaborations between aerospace laboratories, academic researchers, and industrial partners. Rocha’s work focuses on software verification, a complex discipline of software engineering that verifies that a given piece of software conforms to its original specifications and intentions. In April 2008, Rocha presented his research paper, “Theorem Proving Modulo Based on Boolean Equational Procedures” (Camilo Rocha and José Meseguer), at the 10th International Conference on Relational Methods in Computer Science/5th International Conference on Applications of Kleene Algebra, a joint event held in Frauenwörth, Germany. In March 2008, Rocha presented “Assisted Calculational Proofs and Proof Checking Based on Partial Orders” (Jaime Bohórquez and Camilo Rocha) at Formal Methods in Computer Science Education 2008 in Budapest, Hungary.

Alumni

Following the completion of her Fulbright program in 2004, Fabiola López-Durán (Fulbright, Venezuela) remained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to finish her doctoral dissertation entitled “Eugenics in the Garden: Architecture, Medicine, and Landscape from France to Latin America in the Early Twentieth Century.” To assist her in completing her research, López-Durán received a number of prestigious awards. The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation granted her a Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, which supports the original and significant study of ethical or religious values in the humanities and social sciences. She was also awarded a Dedalus Foundation Dissertation Fellowship, which supports doctoral research related to modern art and modernism, and a Kress Travel Fellowship in the History of Art, which provides travel stipends for the completion of research focusing on pre-1900 European art.

In November 2008, Valia Garzón Díaz (Kellogg Leadership Fellowship, Cuba), curated a photography exhibition entitled ‘La mirada constante’ (The Constant Gaze) at the Centro Cultural de España in Guatemala City. The exhibition displayed the poignant and sometimes controversial work of five Guatemalan photojournalists over the last three decades. Garzón was also one of the curators of the Bienal de Arte Paiz, an event celebrating 30 years of design and contemporary art in Guatemala. In 2007, Garzón co-authored a book entitled Las Honas Guatemaltecas (Anabella S. Paiz and Valia Garzón Díaz), the only comprehensive survey of the Guatemalan slingshot. The publisher, La Ruta Maya Conservation Foundation, says the book “delves into the history, culture, and artistry behind the creation of these distinctive objects and places the slingshot into the broader historical and cultural context of Guatemalan life, describing the country’s relationship to the slingshots from its agricultural beginnings, to commercial plantation and industrial production of rubber, to tourism.” Currently, Garzón works as an advisor to private collectors and projects related to visual arts. During her 2002 Kellogg-sponsored program, Garzón carried out a short-term research project entitled, “Philanthropy and the Guatemalan Diaspora in the United States,” at the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society at The City Univ. of New York.

The research Cherie Maureen Metcalf (Fulbright, Canada) conducted while obtaining an environmental law degree at Yale Law School has born fruit in many publications and events. In October 2008, she presented her paper “The (Ir)relevance of Constitutional Protection for Property Rights: Compensation for Takings in Canada and the U.S.” at the first Harvard–Stanford International Junior Faculty Forum. The conference, which took place at Stanford Law School, was designed to identify and bring together the next generation of leading legal scholars from around the world. In February 2008, Metcalf presented her paper “Aboriginal Rights, Participatory Governance and Traditional Knowledge” at the Canadian Bar Association’s Aboriginal Law CLE Conference Panel. In 2007, the year she completed her Fulbright studies, she presented her work entitled “Corporate Social Responsibility as Global Public Law: Third Party Rankings as Regulation by Information” at the Univ. of Toronto’s Law and Economics Workshop in November and at the annual conference of the Canadian Law and Economics Association in Toronto in September. Metcalf is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Law at Queen’s Univ. in Ontario, Canada.

Anabelle Montecinos Vargas (Fulbright, Bolivia) co-wrote a book entitled Perfecciona tu Inglés Partículas en Acción I (Hugo Murillo Benich and Anabelle Montecinos Vargas) in 2007. “The use and translation of English particles for Spanish speakers can be very difficult,” writes the publisher, “and Hugo Murillo Benich and Anabelle Montecinos Vargas sought out a book to teach this. When they had trouble finding one, they decided to compile this—a Spanish-to-English description of difficult English particles (articles, prepositions, adverbs) with examples followed by practice exercises.” Montecinos received a master of science degree from the College of Agriculture at Montana State Univ. in 1998. As a part of her Fulbright program, Montecinos also participated in advanced English language training at the Univ. of Pittsburgh English Language Institute.

When Jacqueline Oram-Sterling (Fulbright, Jamaica) applied for a Fulbright grant in 2005, she wrote, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. For me, applying for this grant is my first step towards qualifying for a doctoral degree. My institution, The Mico College, is the oldest teacher training institution in the Caribbean and is presently expanding its programs to offer bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Therefore, it is paramount that staff be trained at the highest level.” Since then, Oram-Sterling has completed her two year Fulbright program, stayed on at her host institution, Illinois State Univ., to finish her doctoral degree in educational administration, and received a grant from the Margaret McNamara Memorial Fund (MMMF) to support her exceptional work. The MMMF, an initiative of the World Bank, supports the education of women from developing nations whose graduate studies and future plans are intended to benefit women and children. In May 2008, MMMF recipients were invited to Washington D.C., where Oram-Sterling attended forums and exchanged stories with fellow honorees from around the world. She also shared her experiences as a woman working in Jamaican higher education as the keynote speaker at the March 2008 Annual International Women’s Day Breakfast in Bloomington, Illinois, hosted by the American Association of University Women and the local chapter of Siroptomist International. Oram-Sterling expects to complete her doctoral studies and return to Jamaica in August 2009.

Marcela Paredes de Vásquez (Fulbright, Panama) was elected as the first woman president of the Universidad Tecnológica de Panamá (UTP) by a majority of UTP faculty, staff, and students. She is the first female president of a national university in Panama. Paredes replaced Salvador Rodríguez (USAID, Panama) as UTP president in February 2008, at the end of his five-year term. She began her career in at UTP in 1983, where, due to her academic excellence, she served as an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering while completing her undergraduate studies at the university. She later received a graduate degree in management from UTP and, through the Fulbright Faculty Development Program, a master’s degree in engineering in 2007 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

In January 2008, Jose Everardo Rivera Bonilla (Fulbright, El Salvador) was named dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics at the Escuela Superior de Economía y Negocios in La Libertad, El Salvador, where he received his undergraduate degree in economics and business economics. Rivera completed his master’s degree in political science at New York Univ. (NYU) in May 2007. During his time at NYU, Rivera was vice president, treasurer, and one of the founders of the school’s International Relations Society.

Giovanna Rivero (Fulbright, Bolivia), who received her master’s degree in Spanish language and literature from the Univ. of Florida in December 2008, published her second novel, Tukzon, historias colaterales (Grupo Editorial La Hoguera), in July of that year. The book, whose title alludes to the challenges of language structure through its spelling of the word Tucson, is a novel made up of 14 individual stories with a unifying theme. In Rivero’s own words, the book is “a hybrid novel about the immigration process in which the two women protagonists cross the desert looking to fulfill their dreams, but surprises are waiting for them everywhere. Readers can find science fiction, drama, and a good mood in Tukzon.” Rivera, who participated in the International Writing Program (IWP) at the Univ. of Iowa in 2004, was invited to Viterbo Univ. in La Crosse, Wisconsin, in October 2008, as one of three distinguished writers-in-residence from the IWP. She read from her novel and participated with the other writers-in-residence in a panel discussion on the values of internationalism.