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Bucknell Fulbright Award Winners Take Their Passions for Community-building Global

LEWISBURG, Pa (July 7, 2022) – The drive to create lasting change for good runs as a common thread for many Bucknellians. This year, three Fulbright Award winners are taking that passion abroad on their next steps to support and transform communities.

Offering study, research, teaching and exchange opportunities in more than 140 countries, the Fulbright U.S. Student Program expands perspectives through professional and academic development and cross-cultural dialogue. The program is grounded in community engagement and cultural immersion, allowing Fulbrighters to expand their viewpoints as they develop mutual understanding with the people of their host country.

Bucknell’s 2022 award winners exemplify these values. And while they each face their Fulbright experience with individual inspiration and diverse backgrounds, they share the common goal of working to build stronger communities.

When her original internship experience was canceled due to COVID-19, Genevieve Block ’22 made a quick pivot and secured a summer experience working with an environmental group called Clean Water Action in her hometown of Baltimore. The focus of her work settled on the impacts of the virus on undocumented immigrants working in the Maryland farming industry.

“They were being unfairly treated in their working environment and were being heavily exposed to COVID,” says Block. “I worked on creating legislation and submitting it to the Maryland government to help support them. Through that internship, I became really passionate about immigration and supporting people through public health policies.”

It was this experience that inspired Block to apply into the Fulbright program. She is heading to Colombia later this summer — specifically the city of Bucaramanga in the Santander region — to serve as an English teaching assistant. There, she’ll work alongside a professor in a university classroom, assisting with activities and leading sections of lessons for English language learners. “And then in addition to that, you’re expected to engage in a community project,” she says.

Block fully intends to take advantage of the opportunity.

“When I was looking for countries to apply for the Fulbright, Columbia really stood out to me because they have a very strong health program,” she says. “Over the past 10 years, they’ve totally changed the system to provide better care to people in Colombia, including Indigenous populations.”

Block knew early in her college career that she was interested in international work and had aspirations of joining the Peace Corps before entering law school.

What she didn’t know early on was that her academics would center on the study of geography. “During the first semester of my first year, I enrolled in Geography 100 and ended up loving it. My professor saw how passionate I was and she convinced an upper level geography professor to let me into another class,” Block says. That class was Third World Development geography and had a focus on health care. “I was a freshman in a class of seniors, and I loved it. It totally changed my course at Bucknell and made me really interested in things like health development and international development.”

Settling in as a geography and Spanish double major, she focused on human geography in Latin America and the Global South. As she grew in her understanding of the region, she became particularly interested in policies and how they change.

Block’s path is clear ahead of her. “I want to go to law school and focus on either health or immigration law,” Block says. “In both of those fields, having a fluency in Spanish is critical.”

Her Fulbright year in Colombia is the perfect next step. “There is no better place I can think of to learn about changes in policy specifically made to improve a health care system and support the population. Hopefully I’ll have the opportunity to volunteer in a health organization to see those changes first hand.”

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Genevieve Block