FOR RELEASE: Thursday, August 21, 2008
Fulbright Award Takes Siloam Springs Man to Hong Kong
Bryan Winzer
As a kid, the farthest Bryan Winzer traveled from his home in Siloam Springs was to Chunky, Miss., to stay with his grandparents in the summer. But, if you want to reach Winzer anytime during the next 11 months, he'll be in Hong Kong.
Winzer, a first-generation college student, started his world travels not long after he graduated from Hendrix College in Conway with a bachelor's degree in history and classical studies. His latest change of address is funded by a prestigious Fulbright grant Winzer won to teach English as a foreign language at the Hong Kong Institute of Education.
Winzer learned he had won the fellowship in April, a month before he completed a master's degree in higher education leadership at the University of Arkansas while working full time as an academic counselor in the office of Pre-College Programs.
Educational exchange can turn nations into people, contributing as no other form of communication can to the humanizing of international relations. — Sen. J. William Fulbright, 1983
Movies and Folklore
A visit to the Web site of the Institute of International Education that administers the Fulbright program resembles a trip around the world. Potential applicants can navigate among types of grants and countries that participate. Winzer said he chose to apply for the Hong Kong award because of his interest in folklore and film.
"I love movies," Winzer said, "especially the old martial arts movies like the 1970s Bruce Lee films. All of those came out of Hong Kong, and I'm interested in the impact they've had on American movies such as 'The Matrix' and 'Kill Bill.' Traditional films out of Hong Kong were influenced by Cantonese opera. They have very showy, elaborate fight scenes. I'm interested to see where that comes from.
"I also love folklore and I have a pretty good grasp of Western folklore and I know some about African folklore," he continued. "I don't know anything about Asian folklore. The subject of the common human experience is fascinating to me. Even with a huge mosaic of cultures, we can find common threads about what it means to be human."
Winzer will assist another teacher in Hong Kong. The Institute of Education, a teacher-education university, has partnerships with elementary schools, and Winzer expects to be work with schoolchildren, too, sponsoring English clubs, organizing movie nights, that sort of thing. In addition to his teaching duties, he will take "survival Cantonese" and other classes at the institute, he said.
Second Time Around
This was Winzer's second attempt at a Fulbright grant. Previously, he applied to go to Romania, a country he later visited on his own. He was disappointed that he didn't even make the final cut that time, but he believes the experience helped him succeed on the second attempt.
He also gives credit to DeDe Long, director of the university's office of Study Abroad and International Exchange.
"She read my drafts and gave me advice," he said. "Having gone through the process once, I had a better idea of what the program wanted to know. They are interested in your skills but also what you hope to get out of the experience."
Long said in a news release that the number of students applying for these awards has steadily increased over the years.
"The students have to be among the best candidates on their campus, then in the nation and finally in the country where they are applying to study," Long said.
Fulbright grants of about $25,000 are made primarily for advanced research, graduate study and teaching in elementary and secondary schools. The late Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas sponsored the legislation that put the program into place in 1946 as a means to build cultural understanding between U.S. citizens and people of other countries. The Fulbright program is the U.S. government's premier scholarship effort, answering directly to Congress on matters relating to the program's funding as well as recruitment and placement policies.
Globe Trotter
Winzer first lived away from Arkansas when he took a job with Teach for America after graduating from Hendrix in 2004.
"It's a national program for kids out of college who commit to teach for two years in a high-need area," Winzer explained. "Teach for America looks for high-energy, high-quality people who can teach students who normally don't have that kind of experience. It is a really great program. I went to a Navajo reservation in Tohatchi, New Mexico, about 30 minutes north of Gallup."
The population was 99 percent Native American, Winzer said, and the people were very welcoming.
"I was 22 and my oldest student was 20," he recalled. "I taught American history at an alternative school with students who had problems in regular school. They had problems with drugs and discipline, and some were teen parents. The idea was to get them caught up so they could graduate with their peers."
During that time, he also spent a summer in Alaska participating in teaching workshops that were part of Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English.
When his two years were up, Winzer went back to Fayetteville and taught Latin during the summer in the university's Upward Bound program for high school students.
"That was a really different teaching experience," he said. "I went from kids having to share textbooks to kids who had access to resources."
Winzer next left the country for an archaeological dig in Bulgaria, where local officials were trying to boost tourism with a focus on historical artifacts. Before going, he learned to read Cyrillic so that he could understand menus and street signs, and while he was there he learned archaeological techniques from Bulgarians with limited English skills.
"It was slow, tedious work," Winzer said of the archaeology. "It may look exciting and romantic in the 'Indiana Jones' movies, but the experience cemented into me that I don't want to be an archaeologist. It's a lot of pottery and a lot of dirt and long days under the hot sun. We hiked 45 minutes up a mountain to the dig and 45 minutes back down at the end of the day. I lost so much weight."
When his time on the dig was up, Winzer extended his trip with excursions to Romania and Turkey. Despite limited knowledge of the local languages and customs and traveling on his own, Winzer had only one experience that frightened him. After an overnight train trip that left him fatigued and disoriented, he came close to getting ripped off by opportunists who tried to take advantage of his confusion about the currency of Bucharest.
"I never figured out that city," he said. "I had other people say this to me, too: I think they take up the streets at night and rearrange them. I never know how much I was paying for anything. I felt like such a child. People said I was crazy to go to a country where I didn't know how anything worked, but I had only that one bad experience."
Winzer has also visited a friend from Siloam Springs who is teaching English in Japan. When his Fulbright experience is over, he may stay in Asia another year. He plans to pursue a master's degree in English or folklore when he returns.
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Contact:
Heidi Stambuck, director of communications
College of Education and Health Professions
(479) 575-3138, stambuck@uark.edu