Fulbright international students attend summer program at KU

LAWRENCE — Thirty-three Fulbright international students are attending this year’s Fulbright Pre-Academic Summer Program at the University of Kansas to help them acclimate to academic life and American culture before they begin their graduate studies. The students arrived July 6.

With the help of KU faculty and staff, the Applied English Center is offering a four-week program that focuses on English language and refinement of academic skills, technology and research training, Fulbright program goals, orientation to U.S. university life, survival skills for graduate students, and cross-cultural orientation.

KU is one of seven institutions offering this type of Fulbright pre-academic program to approximately 230 of the more than 1,800 new grantees of the Foreign Fulbright Student Program. KU has offered a program for new Fulbright students numerous times since the 1960s.

Students will visit Haskell Indian Nations University, have dinner with a Lawrence family, go to the Douglas County Fair and spend a day in Kansas City.

“The Fulbright grantees come from 24 countries,” said Margaret Coffey, AEC associate director. “For the first time, grantees from Cambodia, Hungary and Poland are participating. The Applied English Center is excited to have the opportunity to welcome these amazing students from all over the world and to help ease their transition into U.S. graduate studies in the fall.”

Two of the students will stay at KU to work on their graduate degrees in business and psychology.

The program is funded by the U.S. State Department Bureau of Cultural and Educational Affairs and administered by the Institute for International Education in New York.