Guidance and Advice

Heather Theisen-Gándara has more than nineteen years of experience in the field of international education. She joined IIE twelve years ago from Rice University, where she held the position of Assistant Director for the English as a Second Language Program. In 2005, Heather joined IIE in part to work on outreach for the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, in addition to the KAUST Discovery Scholarship, the Iraq Scholars and Leaders Program (ISLP), the ExxonMobil MENA Scholarship Program, EM Russian Scholarship Program, and the Baker Hughes Scholars Program in Angola. For the past two years, Heather has led the Fulbright Student Program Outreach and Recruitment Team. Heather holds a master's degree in education with an emphasis in multi-cultural guidance and counseling and has worked within the global community in several capacities. She is in the dissertation phase of her Doctorate of Education degree with an emphasis in higher education administration at the University of Houston-Clear Lake.

Allyson Hoffman is graduating from the University of South Florida in May with her M.F.A in creative writing fiction and a certificate in professional and technical communication. She is a 2018 winner of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Intro Journals Award in Fiction. Her fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and comics have been published in various writing outlets. As a writer and teacher, she believes revision is the most powerful tool in creating polished pieces. Therefore, she spent this Fulbright application cycle writing many, many drafts of her essays. She has been selected as an alternate candidate for an English Teaching Assistantship in Norway in 2018-2019.

Aroushad Tahsini graduated from the University of South Florida in 2015 with degrees in both mass communications and international studies. Through the support of the Office of National Scholars, she received a Fulbright Study Grant to pursue her master's degree in corporate communication at the Instituto de Empresa in Madrid, Spain. Fueled by passion for international relations and her background as an Iranian-American, she chose to apply for the Fulbright program. It allowed her to explore global communications practices and enhanced her understanding of how to interact with diverse backgrounds and experiences.

Elizabeth Brown is a PhD candidate at the USF College of Marine Science, with a focus in marine micropaleontology. She uses chemical compounds found in the fossil remains of single-celled plankton called foraminifera to reconstruct temperature, salinity, and other features of the earth's ancient oceans. She received a Fulbright Student Research Grant to study in the paleontology laboratories of Prof. Dr. Michel Kucera at the MARUM Zentrum für Marine Umweltwissenschaften (Center for Marine Environmental Sciences), Universität Bremen, in northern Germany. Elizabeth applied to the Fulbright Program in 2013, and returned to Germany in summer of 2014. In addition to her own research, she took part in a number of graduate workshops offered by the institute, took German language classes in the evenings, and had an opportunity to volunteer as a shipboard scientist on an expedition to the central Atlantic. She is currently in the final semester of her PhD studies and plans to graduate this summer.

Dr. Donahue Singh is a full-time faculty member in the USF Honors College, teaching primarily Social/Behavioral Science courses. An alumna of Kenyon College, she received her A.B. in Religious Studies with a concentration in Asian Studies before attending the University of Virginia, where she earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology. She received a Fulbright Student Research Grant to India for 2000-2001 shortly after completing her bachelor's degree. Her project was about how people remember, memorialize, and learn about local pasts through media, visits to historical monuments, family stories, etc., focusing on the mid-size but historically significant city of Lucknow. Dr. Donahue Singh says that Fulbright was the best opportunity she had to make long-term friendships in India and to develop her Hindi language skills while living in a university hostel as the only foreign student with about 500 Indian students (all women). Dr. Singh has continued to return to India for study, research, writing, and travel. She held graduate research and training fellowships from not only the Fulbright United States Student Program, but also the American Institute of Indian Studies, the University of Virginia, and the United States Department of Education Foreign Language and Area Studies Program.