Madison Weisend ’20 Wins a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship

Madison Weisend ’20 has received a Fulbright U.S. Student Program award for an English Teaching Assistantship in South Korea during the 2020-21 academic year. A Boren Scholar who studied Hindi, food security, and women’s rights in India during her sophomore year in 2017-18, Madison is completing two majors: Environmental Studies and Politics & Human Rights. Her application was supported by Director of External Student Scholarships Adrienne Bell in addition to a multidisciplinary collection of professors: Alessandra Leri (Natural Sciences), Kent Worcester (Political Science), and Andreas Hernandez (International Studies).

Madison went through a rigorous application process and was adjudicated on the basis of her academic and professional achievements, as well as her record of service and leadership potential. She was selected by Fulbright from thousands of applicants in colleges and universities across the country.

In South Korea, Madison will teach middle school English language courses. As she explained in her application essay, “Given my personal interest in the intersection of gender equality and environmental progress, I chose to apply to South Korea because they hold one of the highest gender equality rankings worldwide. It is projected that once gender equality reaches a certain positive threshold, the environmental crisis will follow suit. Achievement of complete gender equality worldwide is projected to prevent 104 gigatons of carbon dioxide emissions from now until 2050. Women, most especially in rural areas of developing nations, have been shown to tend natural resources more efficiently than men. This has been shown best in agriculture, where the farm yields of educated women surpass that of men by 26%. This has major implications for food and water scarcity, in addition to land use, deforestation, and climate change mitigation as a whole. I have spent time studying areas of the world with poor gender equality standards, and now want to use South Korea as a case of best practice.”

Please join us in congratulating Madison Weisend on her Fulbright award!