Providing students experience with international diversity and opportunities to work with people from other cultures paired with unique language courses is, in many ways, the measure of a great university. The Red & Black offers a terrific introduction to the 2018 Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistants on campus this year:

Every year, hundreds of people apply to be a Fulbright Foreign Language Teacher Assistant in the U.S. Only a handful make it through the grueling application process. Not only do students have to apply, but once picked to come to a university in the states, they have to apply for a J-1 exchange visitor visa.

The University of Georgia’s Fulbright FLTAs for the 2018-19 school year have been in the U.S. for two weeks or less. They flew in for orientation in Philadelphia and have spent the last few days getting to know Athens and preparing to be both a teacher and student.

See the individual introductions in the article for a hint of this extraordinary exchange, for the TAs and for UGA students. The Fulbright program is capacity building at an important scale: global perspective on the personal level. In this globalized era, graduate schools and employers look for students with increased international diversity as a part of their education experience, in addition to diversity within American cultures. Welcome to all of the Fulbrights TAs and we hope you have a great year becoming a part of the campus community.