Santa Fe named Fulbright 'top producer'
A Santa Fe College administrator this past year was named a Fulbright Scholar, making Santa Fe one of the relatively few baccalaureate/associate institutions to have a faculty member given the award during the 2018-2019 academic school year.
Dan Rodkin, associate vice president for Student Affairs, in April participated in the Fulbright Community College Administrator Seminar in Russia, where school administrators from across the United States met with administrators from Russia to discuss each other's approach to higher education and strategize about ways they could collaborate.
"It was was incredibly rewarding and a great opportunity to find a little bit more about the county," Rodkin said. "Growing up, Russia was the evil empire of the Ronald Reagan days, so it was nice to get past the politics and get to know the people."
Rodkin's participation in the program put Santa Fe in elite company as one of 26 associate/baccalaureate institutions named to the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of top producers of Fulbright Scholars for this past school year. Only 26 out of the 1,100 associate/baccalaureate institutions in the country produced a Fulbright Scholar.
The Fulbright Program, a flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government, is designed to increase mutual understanding between the U.S. citizens and the people of other countries, according to its website.
A Santa Fe media release said since Fulbright's inception in 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided more than 390,000 participants — chosen for their academics and leadership potential — with the opportunity to exchange ideas internationally and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.
More than 800 U.S. college and university faculty and administrators, scientists, and more are awarded Fulbright grants to teach and/or conduct research annually.
The Fulbright Program at Santa Fe is supported through its International Education office, supervised by Vilma Fuentes, Santa Fe's assistant vice president for student affairs.
Santa Fe has produced four Fulbright Scholars in recent years, and its staff have participated in Fulbright programs in Germany, Ukraine, and Egypt, Fuentes said.
The college also has hosted five Fulbright Scholars-in-Residence from Brazil, China, Indonesia, and Ukraine since 2006, Fuentes said.
Santa Fe’s success in the Fulbright program is something President Jackson Sasser believes is a testament to the college’s commitment to internationalism.
“For a college student to not have an understanding of culture, geography, different religions, is to be uneducated,” said Jackson, who announced he’d be retiring in February 2020. “The world is reliant on people having an appreciation for diversity in all of those areas, so we’ve made educating our students in these areas a priority.”
Sasser said Santa Fe's participation in the program over the past decade has been rewarding for its students and faculty.