UM Students Win Fulbright Fellowships

Lucy (left) smiling, Jedd (middle) leaning against a bike in a field, and selfie of Dillon (right)

Recent graduate Lucy Tompkins will spend a year in Germany as part of a Fulbright Young Professional Journalist Program fellowship studying and reporting on the experiences of Syrian women who have become refugees in Berlin. Tompkins spent three weeks in Berlin for a summer trip through Montana Journalism Abroad, where she wrote a story about atheist refugees in camps

Tompkins graduated in December with majors in anthropology and journalism. She will begin her Fulbright fellowship in Berlin in September. Her work will involve doing in-depth interviews and photographing Syrian women, and she will finish the grant with an internship at a paper in Germany.

“Since the refugee crisis of 2015, we have read little about what female refugees themselves think about their situation as Muslim women in a largely secular country like Germany,” Tompkins said.

Sankar-Gorton, a geography master’s student completing an option in community and environmental planning this spring, received a Fulbright to conduct research in Slovenia.

Sankar-Gorton’s thesis research focuses on shifting rivers in the American West. During his Fulbright term, he will research Slovenian mountain-based environmental education.

“The Slovenes incorporate mountain geography, culture, and technical learning into their public school system in interesting and creative ways,” Sankar-Gorton said. “I will work to understand better how they design and implement their programs. Then, I will bring those lessons back to Montana schools to develop our own mountain-based environmental education programs.”

Dillon Sarb, a UM graduate with a double major in political science and German and a minor in journalism, won a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Germany.

Sarb likely will be placed in Schleswig-Holstein, the northernmost state in Germany. His assignment as an English Teaching Assistant involves helping an English teacher in Germany and encouraging a better understanding of American culture and values in his German community.