Katherine Buikema, Monica Nedialkova, Maya Khalife-Hamdan, and Anna Rush—members of the Rhodes College Class of 2025— have been selected to receive Fulbright U.S. Student Awards for the 2025-2026 academic year. The Fulbright Program currently facilitates the exchange of students and scholars between the United States and more than 140 countries, and applications for 2025-2026 continue to be reviewed. Rhodes is among the top producers of Fulbright U.S. Students.
Buikema and Nedialkova in Bulgaria, Khalife-Hamdan in Colombia, and Rush in Spain will serve as English teaching assistants in their assigned countries and as cultural ambassadors for the U.S. The age and academic level of the students varies by country, ranging from kindergarten to university level.
Buikema, an English major from Westmont, IL, has excelled in the Rhodes Mock Trial program, winning awards and competing in the national championship tournament. As a 2023 Rhodes Summer Service Fellow, she began working at Just City, an organization in Memphis dedicated to criminal justice reform, and continued working there until the end of 2024. She also has worked as an intern in the Office of Congressman Steve Cohen. In addition, Buikema is a Rhodes College Writing Fellow and received the Department of English’s 2025 John R. Benish Award for Excellence in the Study of English. She recently was inducted into the prestigious Phi Beta Kappa honor society.
Nedialkova, an environmental sciences major from Portland, OR, has visited Bulgaria before and is interested in learning more about its different cultures and lifestyles. On campus, she has served on the Allocations and Student Organizations Commission of Rhodes Student Government and as a Health Professions Advising student ambassador. Nedialkova has a love for nature, growing up in a city where she said nature is “present throughout the main streets, taught in schools, and celebrated by the people.” She is also interested in holistic medicine and aspires to become a physician.
Khalife-Hamdan, an international studies and Spanish double major from Pacific Grove, CA, recently completed Honors Research titled “Breaking the Silence: Chilean Courts and Justice for Dictatorship-Era Sexual Violence,” which she presented at the Midwest Political Science Association Conference. A summer 2023 Mertie Buckman International Intern, she worked in Santiago, Chile, as a researcher at the University of Chile Law School’s Human Rights Research Center. On campus, she is the co-president of the Rhodes chapter of Amnesty International and president of the Sigma Iota Rho international studies honors society. She recently was inducted into the prestigious Phi Beta Kappa honor society.
Rush, a psychology and Spanish double major from Pittsburgh, PA, is a member of the Women’s Tennis team and a Spanish tutor in the Rhodes Language Learning Center. At the annual Rhodes Symposium this year, she presented a sociolinguistic analysis of the female migrant experience in La Carreta, a play by René Marqués. In addition, she presented her research on biliteracy education. Rush has been a member of a Rhodes research team facilitating weekly bilingual book club discussions in a local elementary school.