Offices and Departments

Student Advising - Fulbright

UNITED STATES - INDIA EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION (USIEF)

Fulbright Regional Office in Eastern India,
American Center, Kolkata.
 Phone : 91-33-3984-6300
Facsimile : 91-33-2288-1636
  E-mail : usefical@dataone.in
Web: http://www.fulbright-india.org
 Hours : Monday through Friday, 9am to 5pm.

 

         Fulbright Community Online

The United States-India Educational Foundation (USIEF) administers educational exchange activities between the United States and India. It has four regional offices of which the Kolkata office, housed along with the Public Affairs Office in the American Center, serves the States of Assam, Bihar, Orissa, the North Eastern Hill States of Arunachal, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, the Union territories ofthe Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and West Bengal. The activities of the office include :

 (1) Giving Fulbright Fellowships to Indian and American scholars (Fulbright Exchanges)

 (2) Giving educational counselling to Indian students who wish to pursue higher education in the United States (Educational Advising Services).

 Fulbright Exchanges

Announcements for grants to American and Indian scholars are made more than one year in advance. Grants for Indian scholars are advertised in India during the month of March while those for the American scholars are similarly advertised in the USA. The selection of the scholars in both the countries is carried out through a nation-wide open competititon with the help of academic experts in the country concerned. In India the administrative agency is USIEF and in the USA it is the Councilfor International Exchange of Scholars (CIES) in Washington DC for the senior scholars andthe Institute of International Education (IIE) in New York for the students. IIE/CIES helps in the placement of the Indian scholars at the American campuses and USIEF assists with the placement of the American scholars in the Indian universities. Seminars,workshops and special lectures are also organised by USIEF with the Fulbright American scholars as resource persons.

 The grants or fellowships given are :

 (1) for post-doctoral research and pre-doctoral research. The Indian grants are given only in specific fields of study which are changed usually every two years to cover a wider range of subjects. The American grants or fellowships are given in a few specific fields but in addition there are also the "open grants" covering all fields ;

(2) for professional areas such as in Library Science and Library Management, also in Communication Technology ;

(3) for lecturing ;

(4) for the Arts including Plastic and Performing Arts, Museum Management and Cultural Appreciation ;

(5) for mid career business managers inpartnership with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

USIEF also administers the Hubert Humphrey Fellowships for professional managers in their mid-career from both the public and private sectors as well as the Humphrey/NIDA (National Institute of Drug Abuse) Fellowships for professionals in the filed of Substance/ Drug Abuse research.

USIEF disseminates information on the programs offered by the East West Center (EWC), Hawaii. These are mostly pre-doctoral and post-doctoral grants for Asia-Pacific area studies. There are also opportunities for some short-term seminars and workshops such as one in Population Studies and the Jefferson Fellowship in Journalism. These are announced from year to year by the EWC.

Educational Advising Services

A large number of Indian students are keen to pursue their higher education in the United States. USIEF provides educational advising services which include the following activities :

(1) use of a resource library containing individual catalogs of American colleges and universities, guide books on admission procedures, financial aid for foreign students and sample test papers for the admission tests (TOEFL, GRE, SAT, GMAT, LSAT) ;

(2) trained staff to guide students in the use of the library and to provide information ; hours for assistance and library reference are Monday through Friday, 9.30 am to 5 pm ;

(3) group counselling sessions on Introduction to Higher Education in USA ;

(4) annual
pre-departure orientation including briefing on student visas and the re-entry issue ;

(5) occasional lecture presentations for the library users by visiting American faculty on admission opportunities for international students ;

(6) occasional discussions on American degree programs by students currently studying at American colleges and universities ;

(7) videos on American colleges and universities;

(8) practice exercises from the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) tapes ;

(9) attestation of degree certificates and copying of library material required for applications for admission to American colleges and universities ;

(10) use of student-designated computers for reading material on CD-ROM as well as internet browsing.

USIEF-Kolkata also participates as liason for the NAFSA (National Association of Foreign Student Affairs) OSEAS (Overseas StudentsEducational Advising Services) Linkage programs to provide information on degree programs offered by institutions in India. The requests are sent out through the Inter-L to theRegional Educational Advising Consultant (REAC) who screens and forwards the relevant queries to the USIEF offices in Kolkata (and Mumbai).

USIEF also tries to facilitate StudyAbroad/Semester Abroad programs at Indian institutions for American colleges/universities.The Kolkata office has negotiated with the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in Kolkata for offering such a course in business and financial studies with short-term placement at an industry. The IIM is a premier business school of national and international repute. Another Study Abroad program is under negotiation for courses in Indian philosophy, art and culture at Visva-Bharati University, founded in 1921 by the Indian poet laureate Rabindranath Tagore, at Santiniketan in rural Bengal within 3 hours of railway travel from Kolkata. Santiniketan is a serene and pastoral campus with a very active and prestigious Art school as well as a Music school. Both these institutions attract many foreign students from Europe and Japan. The Japanese Government has established, from public and private donations, a Nippon Bhavan at Visva-Bharati University to work even more closely with the university and to promote Japanese interestin Indian philosophy and culture. Santiniketan also boasts of an agricultural school and a centre for rural reconstruction within its campus, and a state-of-the-art computer centre.

Through all of these activites USIEF aims to promote mutual understanding between India and the United States which is the goal of the Fulbright Fellowship Program. Started in 1946 as global educational exchanges it nowoperates in more than 140 countries. In India the Program was established in 1946. The vision of its founder, Senator J.William Fulbright, is best reflected in his ownwords. In 1983 he wrote

"Education is the best means -- probably the only means -- by which nations can cultivate a degree of objectivity about each other's behavior and intentions ...", also

"Educational exchange can turn nations into people, contributing as no other form of communication can to the humanising of international relations ..."

Between India and USA there are about fortyFulbright scholars coming and going annually.

The current fields of study for the Indian research scholar awards are in American Studies, Intellectual Property Rights, the SocialSciences, and Business. There are also Travel Only Grants for scholars invited by institutions in either country for research or teaching assignments funded by the hosted institutions for a minimum period of two months. The duration of the research grants are from 7 to 9 months, 6 months for the professional fellowships, and 9 months for the HubertHumphrey Fellowship. Travel Only Fellows have to be in residence in America or in Indiafor a minimum period of two months and a maximum of one year. The Fulbright-CII awards for Leadership in Management are given for a period of 10 weeks only at the Carnegie MellonSchool of Business at Pittsburgh University. Besides advertising all of these grants insome of the national dailies announcements are mailed to institutions of higher learning throughout the eastern region from USIEF-Kolkata.

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