As I mentioned in my previous post, the application process was a bit daunting to me at first. Once I settled on a specific Fulbright award for which I wanted to apply, the application become more manageable. I signed into the online application system and started to enter my personal info. At the same time, I began researching Bhutan so that I could put together a compelling project proposal. The application consists of all the basic applicant info you would expect, demographics, educational background, and a Curriculum Vitae. In addition to that you need 3 letters of recommendations and a 3-5 page project proposal. Some grants also require a letter of invitation from an institution in the host country. Bhutan wasn’t one of the countries so that was one thing I didn’t need.
Even though I had picked Bhutan, I didn’t have a clear idea of what my project would be. I teach a variety of Psychology courses, but the area that most interests me is positive psychology. If you aren’t familiar with it, Positive Psychology is the scientific study of well-being, or happiness. It is more or less the opposite of Abnormal Psychology.
One thing that drew me to Bhutan in the first place is their focus on “Gross National Happiness”.
Read more about Positive Psychology here or learn about Bhutan’s Center for the Study of GNH.
I read all I could about the Center for the study of Gross National Happiness and started researching the Royal University of Bhutan (RUB). An idea was starting to form in my mind for a project proposal. I would apply for a combined teaching/research grant so that I could do research at the Center for the Study of GNH while also teaching courses at the University. One of the things I read on the University’s website was their Mission and Vision statement. I wanted to really understand the values and needs of the RUB.
FYI, I learned the value of this through my work on numerous search committees at my college. Applicants who had read our mission statement and are familiar with our values as an institution always stand out. If you are applying for a job somewhere, please take the time to learn about that organization.
Ok, back to my application. An area of growth that was highlighted in the RUB’s mission statement was to promote excellence in teaching through creating a faculty development program. One aspect of this was to create some kind of student evaluation system for the university. This is an area in which I have deep knowledge and experience. Now I have a plan so I start writing up a draft of my proposal.
At the same time, I recruited my writers for the three letters of recommendation. Fulbright requires that you get a letter from a colleague at your institution, your Dean, and a person from outside your institution. The first two were easy for me. I asked my department Chairperson and my Dean. I know and respect them both and they know my teaching and faculty development work well. The outside person was a harder choice for me. Since I’m not a researcher I am not well-connected to other faculty in my field, like one would be at a traditional research university. I spent a few weeks worrying about this and debating who I knew well enough outside of my college to ask them to write a letter of recommendation for my Fulbright application. I finally decided to ask a former colleague of mine who was the Dean of Innovative Teaching and Learning at my college and had moved on to take a position at the MN State system office as the Interim Associate Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs. She wasn’t within my field, exactly, but she was a person who I had worked closely with on faculty development related work. If part of my proposal was focused on faculty development work than this person could speak well to my work in that area. I realized this was a bit of a risk, since the guidelines for letters specifically stated you need a letter from someone in your field from an outside institution but I knew that she could write me an excellent letter, so I decided to go with.
With my letter writers on board, I needed to get focused on finishing a respectable draft of my project proposal, because my letter writers needed to know what I was planning to do so that they could tailor their letters to address my skills in those areas.
This whole process took me pretty much the entire Spring 2017 semester. By the end of my spring break in March I had about 3 pages of my project proposal written out. Now that I felt like I had a decent idea of my project and a good understanding of both the country of Bhutan and the Royal University of Bhutan system, I decided to look through the Fulbright scholars online directory to find the previous Fulbright scholars who had been to Bhutan.
Curious about who’s been a Fulbright scholar and to which country? View the Fulbright Scholar Directory here.
This directory was one of the best resources that I had, though I didn’t realize at the time how useful this directory would be. I made a list of the names and contact information for the last 3 years of Fulbright scholars who had gone to Bhutan. I was a little hesitant at first but decided to send them each an email to ask if they’d be willing to talk with me about Bhutan and about my application. This was one of the best things I did during my application process and I will talk more about this in my next blog post. For now, I’ll just say that I made major revisions to my project proposal after connecting with two Fulbrighters.
By the end of May I had a final draft of my project proposal. I had submitted all the personal information through the online application system and uploaded my CV. I still needed to submit 2-3 course syllabi which couldn’t exceed a total of 10 pages. My typical syllabus is about 6 pages so I needed to do some major editing. I picked syllabi from three courses that I had included in my project proposal for possible courses I could teach at the RUB, Educational Psychology, Positive Psychology, and Child Development. I did some major edits to get it down to 3-4 pages per syllabus.
At the end of June I have all of my materials submitted and have 1 month to go before the deadline. I had requested the letters of recommendation, which have to be submitted directly to Fulbright by each letter writer. You can see in your online application when each letter gets submitted. At this point I still needed two of the letters. I contacted both of those people and reminded them of the August 1 deadline and resent them each the link to submit their letters. It took two more weeks before my application was complete. It took me a solid 10 months of work to get through the entire application process, but I was done with 2 weeks to spare.
Now the only thing I could do is to wait…
Experience Fulbright 