May 5, 2006
Director of Media Relations
413/542-8417
AMHERST, Mass.—Ryan Park, a 2005 graduate of Amherst College, has been awarded a J. William Fulbright Fellowship for postgraduate study in South Korea.
Currently working as a paralegal in an honors program at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., Park studied economics and political science at Amherst, where he received a B.A. degree—and the Thomas H. Wyman 1951 Medal for scholarship, citizenship and character—in 2005. He was the president of the Association of Amherst Students, the student government, for three years. He plans to teach English in South Korea; as he wrote in his Fulbright proposal, “my overriding goal is simply to be a great teacher of the English language and a respected ambassador of the United States.” Park plans a career in higher education or public service, after graduate school when he returns from South Korea. He also plans to work on a research project on “Martyrdom and Evangelical Christianity.”
Congress created the Fulbright Program in 1946 to foster mutual understanding among nations through educational and cultural exchanges. Senator J. William Fulbright, sponsor of the legislation, viewed scholarship as an alternative to armed conflict. Today the Fulbright Program, the federal government’s premier scholarship program, funded by an annual Congressional appropriation and contributions from other participating countries, allows Americans to study or conduct research in more than 100 nations.
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