Take this, UNLV haters: Five Rebels have been named 2015 Fulbright Scholars by the U.S. State Department. All five — Becky Bosshart, Rohan Dharan, Ryan Larsen, Michael Moncrieff and Michael Pfurr — will be teaching English and/or studying abroad.
Bosshart, a UNLV adjunct professor and master’s of fine arts recipient, will go to Romania, where she’ll develop textbooks for English as a Second Language and work on her short story collection. The location is significant to Bosshart because her Peace Corps tenure in the adjacent country of Ukraine was cut short when violence broke out there last year.
On a light note, she said the homesickness-alleviator she would beam to Romania, if she could, was slot machines. “I don’t know why,” she said. “Maybe because I was raised here, but they are consoling to me. I hear them as soon as I step off the plane and I know I’m home. I sigh with relief.”
Dharan, who teaches fourth grade at Red Rock Elementary through Teach for America while working on his master’s in education and curriculum instruction, will head to New Delhi, India. His selection, too, has personal meaning: Both of his parents are native Indian. Anthropology doctoral candidate Moncrieff will conduct research on coalition-building and work on his dissertation while in the farming village of Kistanje, Croatia. And Pfurr, who completed his bachelor’s degree in political science at UNLV in December, will use his German minor to teach English in Austria.
The year these scholars will spend abroad ties into their long-range career goals, from international diplomacy (Pfurr) to a political think-tank (Moncrieff). UNLV’s associate director of international programs, Ryan Larsen, also received a scholarship, to study in Japan for two weeks. Larsen, who has mentored the university’s Fulbright scholars for the past six years, says Las Vegas had a record number of recipients in this year’s national program, which will send some 800 American scholars and professionals to 130 countries around the world.