Fulbright winner plans overseas experience

During the past week, IU President Michael McRobbie has announced that eight IU students received the coveted U.S. Student Fulbright Award and thirteen received the prestigious Fulbright-Hays grant.\nGraduate student Abby Drwecki will be conducting research on anthropology in Poland and is looking to finish research on her dissertation, “Playing With Power: Women’s Self-Defense Courses \nin Poland.” \nDrwecki praises IU’s encouragement of students to seek out grants and fundraising opportunities to further their research. She also mentioned that IU has four workshops geared towards the Fulbright Scholarship program through the IU Office of International Affairs.\n“I think it’s good to have the (10-day) orientation period. You get to meet all of the other Fulbrighters that will be in the same country and it’s a ready-made network…so you are not there all by yourself,” Drwecki said. \nDrwecki first became interested in issues pertaining to Poland through her anthropology advisor during her undergraduate studies at Butler University. While at IU, she decided to take a summer trip to Poland. During her visit, Drwecki learned about women’s self-defense courses, “and it seemed very interesting, and a new thing to study.”\nDrwecki wants to compare the differences between more feminist-based self-defense courses versus ones that are focused more on the \nmartial arts.\n“This is fairly new at least since the fall of communism, and it is something that has been growing ever since Poland joined the \nEuropean Union.”\nNationally 1,328 students received Fulbright awards for the 2007 academic year. In a statement released last week McRobbie said. “IU has long been fortunate to have so many students chosen to participate in Fulbright grant program. ... These awards highlight the quality of our student body, faculty and academic programs.” \nRose Vondrasek, the IU Fulbright Program Advisor, said the difference between the two scholarship awards is that the Fulbright award program gave “a majority of the awards (55 percent) to graduating seniors,” whereas the Fulbright-Hays grant “is a separate program specifically for dissertation research overseas.” \nIn the future, Drwecki said she hopes to become a professor at either a small liberal arts school or a mid-sized state school and continue to do research either about self-defense in Poland or on other topics that interest her.\nFor more information on the Fulbright awards and the Fulbright-Hays grant, contact Vondrasek at rvondras@indiana.edu or call the IU Office of International Programs at 855-7557.