Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Supported by

New title for five UNLV students and faculty: Fulbright scholar

UNLV adjunct professor Becky Bosshart will spend her time in Romania developing textbooks — and working on her short story collection.

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.”

Sponsor Message

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.

Desert Companion welcomed Heidi Kyser as staff writer in January 2014. In 2018, she was promoted to senior writer and producer, working for both DC and KNPR's State of Nevada. She produced KNPR’s first podcast, the Edward R. Murrow Regional Award-winning Native Nevada, in 2020. The following year, she returned her focus full-time to Desert Companion, becoming Deputy Editor, which meant she was next in line to take over when longtime editor Andrew Kiraly left in July 2022. In 2024, Interim CEO Favian Perez promoted Heidi to managing editor, charged with integrating the Desert Companion and State of Nevada newsroom operations.