VSFS eIntern will work with the Office of Academic Exchange Programs. Responsibilities will include identifying and documenting online channels (e.g. websites, social media channels, etc.) of Fulbright Program partners, including Fulbright Commissions and U.S. Embassy public diplomacy offices. The eIntern will also identify content from Fulbright Program partners that would good additions for the Fulbright Source and support outreach encouraging Fulbright Commissions and Embassy partners to submit materials to our data asset management system. These responsibilities will also include supporting the curation and management of these resources.

Basically, I get to read and research a lot about how Fulbright has affected people and choose particular quotes or images to represent that impact.  It's a dream job and I love it!  Another cool thing about the internship is that I am paired with a student in Portland who is a social media guru.  It's her job to use my research to display on social media or in press releases and what she comes up with is pretty amazing and creative.  I've gotten to play around a little bit with online marketing and design with a program called Canva, but have quickly learned that it's not my thing.

I'm currently working on three projects right now.  First, I'm compiling a list of current and previous Fulbrighters' blogs.  I read through them and find particularly poignant quotes or pictures that convey Fulbright's ideals (mutual understanding between countries).  If you know me, reading blogs is something I enjoy doing anyway so it doesn't even feel like a project.  Second, using the list of over forty Fulbrighters who have received the Nobel Prize, I'm compiling a list of quotes that characterize the purpose of the grant.  This involves reading some of their work, biography and interviews and has been really interesting.  Though it's been generally pretty easy to find a useful quote from literature winners, it's been a challenge with the physicists.  Finally, I'm working on a project that Fulbright has wanted to start for awhile.  I'm creating and then filling a database of publications from scholars as a results of a Fulbright grant.  This has been interesting because it's allowed me to research and become comfortable with a citation manager, something that I hope to use for my own research.  Right now I'm using ICU's research library to compile citations which I load into Zotero (citation manager).  The citations can eventually be exported into an Excel spreadsheet and easily manipulated in other ways if the ECA wants to in the future.  For someone who is not so technological, this process was a big learning experience.

One of my past favorite projects was making a list of relevant quotes from Senator Fulbright himself. I actually had used one of his quotes when I applied to the Rotary fellowship so it was fun to go back and find some more.  These quotes were eventually used on a certain design to create several blurbs for social media.  If you are linked to any channel involving Fulbright on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, you might see some of the things I've been working on.  Though the internship has definitely added to some stress because of time and commitment this semester, it's definitely been worth it.  

"International educational exchange is the most significant current project designed to continue the process of humanizing mankind to the point, we would hope, that men can learn to live in peace--eventually even to cooperate in constructive activities rather than compete in a mindless contest of mutual destruction....We must try to expand the boundaries of human wisdom, empathy and perception, and there is no way of doing that except through education." - Senator Fulbright