Experience Fulbright

The Fulbright program was started in 1946 by Senator William J. Fulbright as a means to promote the exchange of ideas across cultures and to share American ideals, innovations, and expertise with other countries and in turn, bring expertise and ideas to the US from those countries.

Each year, Congress determines the budget for the Fulbright program. Currently the Congress is considering a 54% cut to the funding for Fulbright. I’ve reached out to my Members of Congress to ask that they vote to fully fund the Fulbright program but I’m also writing this public letter to ask that ALL Members of Congress vote to continue funding Fulbright.

I have now been a Fulbright scholar in Uzbekistan for 3 months working on a bullying prevent program. I’ve developed a comprehensive stress management and positive psychology program and have trained teachers and psychologists in our four pilot schools in Tashkent. They’ve been using these techniques for one month now and so far the feedback from the schools is positive. Teachers generally report that the students are responding well to the exercises and there seems to be fewer behavior problems. I won’t have any concrete data for a few more weeks but it looks promising.

In addition to training these teachers, I spent two weeks training Ministry of Public Education officials, including those people in charge of all psychological services in the schools and curriculum directors.

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While the teachers have been using the exercises in their classrooms, I’ve been travelling around the regions of Uzbekistan training the school psychologists from each region. So far I have visited 5 of the 13 regions and trained over 500 psychologists and I have 5 more trainings scheduled in May so that number will more than double.

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I’ve also been given a number of other opportunities to work with people, not directly related to my Fulbright project. Back in March I gave the keynote address at the first annual Empowering Girls Summit.

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The Prosecutor’s college invited me to meet with their faculty to discuss the intersection of psychology and the law. The following week I was invited to meet with graduate students in Psychology at the Pedagogical University.

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In addition to these opportunities through my host institution, the Ministry of Public Education, I’ve had a lot of fun helping out the US Embassy. First, I helped staff the Education USA booth at the local college fair where met with students interested in studying in the US.

I led an English conversation club at the National Library in which I did a Q&A about the American educational system. Then I gave a presentation at the US Embassy on the Big 5 Personality traits, also for English language students.

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But wait, there’s more! My son and I spent the past week travelling around Uzbekistan with a team from the Harlem Globetrotters as part of the #sportsdiplomacy program.They presented their T.E.A.M. Up anti-bullying program to students and teachers, while I trained the school psychologists. It was a joint program put together by the US Embassy and the Uzbek Ministry of Public Education. I played a small role as a consultant during the planning process and was lucky to be invited to travel with them to talk with the psychologists. It was an incredible experience and we reached over 2500 students, teachers, and coaches.

You also need to keep in mind that 18 months ago, very few westerners had visited Uzbekistan and none of them were ever allowed inside Uzbek schools. I’m the first westerner that the Ministry of Pubic Education has allowed to work within their K-12 schools. What we are doing here is groundbreaking and will impact an entire generation of Uzbek students. It’s all been made possible by the Fulbright program, through funding provided by Congress.

If you are an American, and believe in what I’m doing, and what all the other Fulbright scholars are doing around the world, please ask your Member of Congress to support full funding for the Fulbright program.

To find the contact information for your Representative and Senators to go https://www.callmycongress.com/ . You can also Tweet at them using #StandforFulbright.