Anna Lee Nabors, a senior international studies and French major at Rhodes, has been selected to receive a Fulbright U.S. Student Program grant for the 2019-2020 academic year. She will serve as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Senegal.
The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. The Fulbright U.S. Student Program provides grants for English teaching assistantships as well as for individually designed study/research projects. Recipients are chosen for their academic merit and intellectual potential.
“During my junior year, I studied abroad in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, and loved the country and experience so much that I knew I wanted to have more time there,” says Nabors. “I found that people were incredibly welcoming and genuinely interested in having conversations about culture, religion, identity, and politics. Senegalese figures such as Léopold Sédar Senghor and Ousmane Sembène have been big parts of my French studies, and I am excited to engage with more contemporary arts and political movements during my year as an English Teaching Assistant. Senegal has an incredibly robust civil society that I hope to be able to learn from, as I see myself working in nonprofits or nongovernmental organizations in the future.”
Nabors spent the summer of 2017 working in Brussels, Belgium, as an intern for the German Marshall Fund of the United States as part of Rhodes’ Mertie W. Buckman International Internship Program. She researched transatlantic issues related to energy security and helped plan events. In the summer of 2018, she served as a research intern for The Carter Center’s Peace Programs, focused on initiatives in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her work included translating French texts and tracking political activity. Located in Atlanta, GA, The Carter Center was founded in 1982 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter.
Locally, Nabors has served as an English teacher for adults with the Refugee Empowerment Program for three years. She is president of the Rhodes chapter of the Sigma Iota Rho international studies honor society, and a member of the Pi Delta Phi National French Honor Society and of Mortar Board honor society for college seniors.
“As a personal goal, I’m working toward fluency in French, and a year in a Francophone country will be invaluable,” says Nabors. “I have loved learning French and teaching English in Memphis, and I am so excited to be able to combine some of my passions in the classroom in Senegal.”
In the next few years, Nabors plans to attend graduate school to study development practice. “I’m really interested in how both business and government can impact human rights and environmental issues, so I want to continue to expand my understanding of development.”
Nabors is a graduate of Homewood High School in Homewood, AL.
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