Last month, Fullbright Awards were given to a University of Idaho student and to a UI alumna.
The awards were given to Micheal Bishop, a Master of Fine Arts candidate in creative writing, and Annarose Qualls, a 2019 graduate with degrees in international studies, Spanish and Latin American Studies.
Annarose Qualls
Qualls spent her time after graduating from UI working for non-profit organizations in Mexico. Her dream since her sophomore year had been to earn a Fulbright Award, but after not being selected for a Fulbright to Rwanda her senior year, doors opened for her in unexpected ways.
Last month, Qualls received word she earned a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Colombia for 2020-21.
ICYMI: Qualls in the news as a student
Qualls is a 2019 alumna who graduated with degrees in international studies, Spanish and Latin American studies. She spent spring 2018 studying in Barranquilla, Colombia, and fell in love with the geographic and cultural diversity of the country.
One of the reasons Qualls enjoyed her time studying abroad in Colombia was how involved she became in her community. She lived with a host family and is still connected with a church she attended. As an extrovert, those interpersonal connections are important to her.
“I would like to build some meaningful relationships where both I impact the person and where they impact me, and we’re both able to learn from each other,” Qualls said. “I would say that’s my overarching goal.”
Qualls said her experiences in Mexico helped her grow and prepare to re-apply for the Fulbright program, as her professors had encouraged her to do. At first, she spent her time building houses and organizing sustainable development projects with Rancho La Paloma in Tecate, Mexico. Once the group finished its projects in Tecate, Qualls found a reason to stay with Studio Del Creador, a non-profit art and music studio with English classes for adults.
When Qualls received the acceptance email, she said the experience of leaving Tecate would be bittersweet. She said her distance from the academic environment also impacted her reaction.
“I think that programs like these, it’s a much more natural transition to get coming right out of your college experience because your future is open,” Qualls said. “You’re leaving college, you’re closing out this season in your life, and you’re ready for something new.”
In Colombia, Qualls will help teach English at a local university. The details of her role will depend on the needs of the university. In addition, she must design and implement a project to engage with the community. She said her project will focus on sustainability and art, but she is remaining flexible in her plans so her project fits the community and its context.
“Even looking at it from an international development standpoint, if you make your decisions about what you’re going to do and how you’re going to do it and what you’re going to need before you even go (into the community), it’s not going to be successful,” Qualls said. “The point of it is to learn from the local community and see what their needs are.”
Qualls hopes to grow as a teacher over her time in Colombia. Although education is not her primary career goal, it is still important to her. She also hopes to positively impact her students.
“Everyone in a second language journey hits roadblocks and gets discouraged and sometimes it can be tempting to not take it very seriously, especially if you think ‘oh, maybe I actually won’t need this’” Qualls said. “I would love to challenge my students to take it seriously and challenge them to strive forward.”
Micheal Bishop
Bishop is focusing on a creative nonfiction project about how New Zealand has granted legal personhood to some of the sacred sites in their country.
Bishop is an MFA candidate in creative writing at UI and is from Waianae, Hawaii. He hopes this work can be used in his home state.
“The 2019 designation of Mount Taranaki as a legally protected ancestor spirit caught my attention,” Bishop said. “I wanted to see the results of that decision firsthand, while also investigating legal personhood as a conservation model that might alleviate the ongoing controversy surrounding Mauna Kea in my home state of Hawaii.”
Mauna Kea made national headlines in 2019 when Native Hawaiians and Hawaiian rights activists protested the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope.
“I’ll perform an exhaustive study of the landforms, history, and inhabitants of Mount Taranaki so that I can compare them to Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, another sacred mountain which, unfortunately, remains embroiled in land-use controversies,” Bishop said.
The telescope itself was not the problem, the location was, according to many articles. Mauna Kea is a sacred site and native Hawaiians believe the building of telescopes on the mountain desecrate the site.
News outlets like the New York Times said the Hawaiians say the building of the other telescopes on the mountain also desecrated the mountain and they do not believe the promise of this being the last telescope to be built.
“I’ll be visiting the three National Parks which, in accordance with the Rights of Nature movement, have been granted legal personhood—including Mount Taranaki, the first mountain in the world to attain this status,” Bishop said.
Bishop said he hopes to learn about how the different geographies, cultures and indigenous traditions have shaped how the United States and New Zealand treat sacred ground.
His Fulbright award will fund his research in New Zealand, and he hopes his findings could be used in his home state.
“My hope is to contribute to a body of literature that can illuminate Indigenous ways of knowing and Traditional Ecological Knowledge,” Bishop said.
Lex Miller and Kali Nelson can be reached at [email protected]