News Release
May 2006
Bethlehem, Pa., May 2, 2006—A Moravian College alumna Rebecca Brandt ’05
was recently named a Fulbright Scholar. Brandt is the seventh Moravian College student
to be awarded a Fulbright in the last seven years, and the sixth student to travel to
Germany on a Fulbright award. She has been selected as a teaching fellow in Berlin, and
while abroad, plans to research the existence of an unspoken divide between the former
East and West Germany.
Brandt, a native of Bethlehem, Pa., graduated summa cum laude from Moravian College,
with a major in German. She was the recipient of the Irving S. Amrhein Award given to
a graduating senior for distinguished work in one or more foreign languages. Brandt was
a member of the German Club, and served as president in her senior year at the college.
In 2002, she graduated summa cum laude from Northampton Community College, where she
received the Liberal Arts Award for the highest grade point average in her major.
Currently, Brandt teaches English as a Second Language at Lehigh Carbon Community College,
and serves as a substitute teacher for English as a Second Language in the (ESL) program
and in the General Educational Development (GED) department at Northampton Community
College.
Brandt joins a growing number of Moravian College students and alumni
to receive the prestigious award. In the 2004-2005 academic year two Moravian College
students, Julie Anderson ’05 and Leigh Ann Caruso ’04 received Fulbright
Scholarships to pursue studies in Germany. Anderson received a teaching fellowship
in Berlin and planned to research German critical sources regarding Fulbright scholar,
author and poet, Sylvia Plath. Caruso received a research fellowship to study colonial
Moravian emotional culture in Erfurt, Germany.
Previously three other Moravian College students were chosen Fulbright
scholars: Marianne Zwicker ’99, Daniel Byrne ’00, and Courtney Rice ’01. Zwicker spent
a year in Berlin studying the Sinti and Roma (Gypsies) who were tribes targeted by the
Nazi racial extermination policies. She then spent years working in Berlin as an English
tutor and playing Celtic fiddle in a band. Byrne served as a teaching fellow in history
in a German high school and continued his research on Nobel Prize-winning writer Heinrich
Böll. Rice taught English at a middle school in Oberschönau in Saxony and continued
research on 18th- and 19th-century Moravian education.
Brandt, Anderson and Caruso were mentored by Josef Glowa, assistant professor of German
at Moravian College. Zwicker, Byrne, and Rice were students of Hans Wuerth, professor
emeritus of German at the college.
Glowa is a member of the advisory board to the newly established program in German Studies
at the College Students who major in German have the particular educational benefit to
draw from Bethlehem's Moravian background and history. The Moravians were the earliest
Protestant group, predating Martin Luther. They received the name Moravians derived from
Moravia, their province of origin, which has been German as often as it has been Czech
in the past millennium.
In 2002, Fulbright scholar: M. Leslie Smith, spent her Fulbright year in Madrid, Spain,
studying the literary influences on Spanish women at the Universitario de Studios de
la Mujer. Her honors project was a study of a short-lived but influential magazine for
women published during the Franco era.
Previous students who received Fulbright Scholarships in the 1960's
were: Patricia McAndrew, class of 1968, an honors history student who received a Fulbright
to translate the major work of renowned Danish ballet master, August Bournonville;
and Helen Kovach Bachochin, class of ’65, received a Fulbright award to study
at the University of Madrid, Spain.
The U.S. Congress created the Fulbright Program in 1946, immediately after World War
II, to foster mutual understanding among nations through educational and cultural exchanges.
Today the Fulbright Program is the U.S. Government's premier scholarship program. It
enables U.S. students, artists and other professionals to benefit from unique resources
all over the world.
Each year the Fulbright Program allows Americans to study or conduct research in over
100 nations. The Institute of International Education (IIE) coordinates the activities
relevant to the U.S. graduate student program and conducts an annual competition for
the scholarships, most of which are for one academic year of study or research.
The Fulbright (Full Grant) provides round-trip transportation; language or orientation
courses, where appropriate; tuition, in some cases; book and research allowances; and
maintenance for the academic year.
The U.S. Student Program is designed to give recent B.S./B.A. graduates, masters and
doctoral candidates, and young professionals and artists opportunities for personal development
and international experience. Most grantees plan their own programs.
