Falls Church Resident Receives Fulbright Award

From McDaniel College: Jaime Calderon, a senior at McDaniel College, has been named a Fulbright finalist for an English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) in Andorra.

He is among four McDaniel students who have received Fulbright awards for the 2017–2018 academic year. This is the fourth consecutive year that a McDaniel student has been named a Fulbright recipient. A total of 10 McDaniel students have ever been awarded a Fulbright scholarship.

A Spanish major, with minors in English literature and French culture and literature, Calderon of Falls Church, Va., said that he chose to apply to Andorra because of its historical connection to Spain and France, in addition to Spanish and French being spoken there. He is most excited to meet the people and begin teaching English language and American culture.

“The fact that I will be working with students who want to learn, who want to be taught English language and culture is pretty amazing,” said Calderon. “I am excited for this experience and I am already preparing lesson plans for them.”

Calderon grew up in El Salvador and moved to the United States when he was 15 years old. He studied abroad in Peru with “The Forest Online,” an interdisciplinary course at McDaniel that took place during Jan Term 2016, and has also traveled to Montreal, Canada.

Active on campus, he is the arts and culture editor of the McDaniel Free Press student newspaper and a member of Contrast Literary Magazine’s editorial board. He is a first-year peer mentor and has held leadership positions with the French Club, serving as president during his junior and senior years. In addition, he has performed with the McDaniel College Choir and The McDaniel Madrigal Singers, including at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in November 2016.

In addition, he is a writing center tutor and has tutored Spanish for the World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures department, as well as for McDaniel’s Student Academic Support Services Office.

He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Alpha Lambda Delta national honor societies, Omicron Delta Kappa leadership honor society, as well as Phi Sigma Iota foreign languages honor society and Sigma Tau Delta English honor society. As a sophomore, he was the recipient of the Jean Alpaugh Award for Interdisciplinary Study.

He spent the summers following his sophomore and junior years teaching English as a second language at the English Language Institute at Wyoming Seminary in Kingston, Pa., where he plans to return this summer.

His future plans are to apply to graduate school to pursue a master’s degree in Hispanic literature. He also wants to travel around the world, specifically in Latin America.

The Fulbright Program, sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the United States Department of State, is the flagship international exchange program. Since 1946, the Fulbright program has provided more than 370,000 participants with the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns.
For more information about McDaniel College, visit www.mcdaniel.edu.

Photo courtesy of McDaniel College