WASHINGTON, D.C. /CitizenWire/ — The J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board welcomes new members, Mr. Rye Barcott and Dr. Christie Gilson. Appointed by President Barack Obama, the two were sworn in today by Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs Adam Ereli, at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C.
Rye Barcott is a Special Adviser to the Chairman and CEO of Duke Energy and co-founder of Carolina for Kibera, a non-governmental organization that uses participatory development to break cycles of violence and develop leaders in the Kibera area of Nairobi, Kenya. He is the author of It Happened on the Way to War, a memoir of his experiences as a U.S. Marine Corps captain and in founding Carolina for Kibera. Mr. Barcott is a TED Fellow (Technology, Entertainment, Design) and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. He formerly served as a member of the Board of Trustees of World Learning, the parent organization of the School for International Training. He received his B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an M.P.A. and M.B.A. from Harvard University, where he was a Reynolds Social Entrepreneurship Fellow.
Dr. Christie L. Gilson is an Assistant Professor of Education at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She has authored or co-authored numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters in special education and disability studies. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study higher education for students with disabilities in Hong Kong in 2006. Dr. Gilson, who is blind, teaches English to blind adults in China using Voice over IP (VoIP), and has mentored youth with disabilities in Germany, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Spain, Taiwan, and the United States. She received a B.S.W. from Illinois State University and an M.S.W. and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board was established by the U.S. Congress to supervise the Fulbright Program, set worldwide policies, select the program participants, and promote the program to audiences around the globe.
The Fulbright Program, sponsored by the Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, is the U.S. government’s flagship international exchange program and is supported by the people of the United States and partner countries around the world. Since 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided more than 310,000 participants from over 155 countries with the opportunity to study, teach, conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.