New College Announces a 7th Fulbright Winner for 2010-11

(June 9, 2010) Having already garnered six Fulbright scholars for 2010-2011, New College of Florida today announced that a seventh student has won the prestigious award, bringing the College’s historical total to 57 Fulbright recipients. The College had a record eight recipients in 2009-2010. Anna Osborne Hamilton, a Humanities major from Saint Augustine, Florida, will be traveling to Mauritius next year under a full grant to study and analyze the increasing use and availability of information and communication technologies. Under the guidance of Christina Meetoo at the University of Mauritius, her anthropology-related project will focus on Mauritian youth, non-government organizations and agricultural cooperatives.  Hamilton hopes to supplement her fieldwork with classes in the communication and French departments at the University of Mauritius.  

On returning to the United States, Hamilton plans to pursue a graduate degree in radio journalism and wants to work for National Public Radio as an in-depth, investigative radio journalist and as a university professor in creative journalism.  While at New College, she did podcasting, reporting and editing for WSLR, and was also an intern for the Association for Independents in Radio in Boston.  She studied sound art at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and spent a semester at sea in 2008 through the University of Virginia.

“The soundtrack to my childhood included programs on NPR, which were always playing on the radio,” stated Hamilton. “For my parents, NPR symbolized human connection, knowledge and social responsibility. I shared the interest, and at age 10, starred as ‘Mosquito Girl’ in my fifth grade class radio drama. The self-confidence and inspiration I gained from it hooked me; already radio had become a guiding force in my life.”

As for her Fulbright, Hamilton explained that in 2001, Mauritius began an ambitious plan to develop information and communication technologies nationwide so as to produce new jobs for the country’s slumping economy. “My project blends ideally with Mrs. Meetoo’s research plan to analyze the effects of the recently intentionally-altered media landscape,” she noted.  “This fits perfectly with my own goal to serve the Mauritian community by contributing to a better understanding of the current state of the media as well as illuminating the additional social benefits for new media forms.”

Hamilton inherited her large family’s large sense of social action and community involvement.  “I grew up helping with beach clean-ups, selling lemonade to benefit the local animal shelter and working at the Farmer’s  Market selling blueberries that were grown and picked on my family’s farm in Saint Augustine,” recalled Hamilton, whose father is a land conservationist and whose mother is a native plant horticulturist.

This year’s awards—all from the 2010 graduating class—reinforce the College’s ranking as one of the Top 10 liberal arts colleges in terms of per-capita Fulbright production. Since gaining independence in 2001, New College has produced 44 Fulbright scholars.

As previously announced, the six other Fulbright recipients are:  Alice Abernathy of Naples, FL (full grant, Spain); Mary Barnes of Houston, TX (English Language Teaching Assistantship, Indonesia); Corianne Etheredge of Beaverton, OR (English Language Teaching Assistantship, South Korea); Taylor Kennedy of Albuquerque, NM (English Language Teaching Assistantship, South Korea); Lauren White of Grosse Pointe Woods, MI (English Language Teaching Assistantship to Germany); and Hannah Woerner of Sarasota, FL (English Language Teaching Assistantship to Germany).

The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to “increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.” With this goal as a starting point, the Fulbright Program has provided almost 300,000 participants—chosen for their academic merit and leadership potential — with the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns. The Fulbright Program was established in 1946 under legislation introduced by then-Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas.

For more information, please contact Linda F. Joffe, associate director of Public Affairs, at (941) 487-4154 or [email protected]

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