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16
2010
Former Madrid Student Receives Fulbright Award
Congratulations to former FIE in Madrid student and Elon University graduate Molly Costigan, who will travel to Valencia, Spain for a year on a Fulbright English Teaching Fellowship. Elon recently wrote a story about Molly.
She also talked to FIE about her study abroad experience and how it led her to the Fulbright award. Molly says of her time abroad with FIE in Madrid:
“My experience with FIE in Madrid is, without a doubt, the reason I decided I wanted to go back to Spain. Through the classes I took at UEM, exploring Madrid, Barcelona, and El Escorial with FIE, spending time with my host family and independent adventures throughout Spain, I really fell in love with the country, the people, the history, and even the food. Because of my experiences with the program, I feel like my application essays really reflected a genuine respect for and interest in Spanish culture. One of the goals of the Fulbright program is the promotion of cross-cultural understanding, and my time in Madrid definitely sparked my interest in this area.”
“... My language learning while abroad has been hugely significant. My Spanish grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary improved greatly, and I also gained a more mature understanding of how people learn language—something that will be very beneficial when I am teaching English. The experience also supplemented the research on my undergraduate thesis about immigration from Mexico to the United States and from Morocco to Spain, which is something that I really tried to emphasize in my application. I was still developing the idea when I got to Madrid, but I knew that I was interested in immigration and Susan gave me a great list of potential sources that really shaped the project. Being able to travel to Morocco from Spain, to talk to my host family and professors about immigration, and to observe the way the issue was treated in the media and other parts of the culture were also things that amplified my understanding of the situation. In addition to the English teaching assistantship, I will also be volunteering with an organization that supports the immigrant population in Spain, so my experience with FIE will definitely help out in both areas and will continue to do so if I decide to pursue either of these possibilities as a career.”