Calhoun resident Michael McCanless wins Fulbright Student Award to teach in Europe
( Memphis, Tenn.)— Michael McCanless, an urban studies major at Rhodes College and resident of Calhoun, Ga., has been selected to receive a Fulbright U. S. Student Program grant for the 2017- 2018 academic year. He will serve as an English Teaching Assistant in Georgia ( Europe).
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. The Fulbright U. S. Student Program provides grants for individually designed study/ research projects or for English Teaching Assistant Programs.
“The grant will allow me to teach and research within the Georgian system of higher education. My teaching will involve working within college classrooms as a native speaking resource for students studying English,” says McCanless. “For research, I hope to study the Georgian educative system, particularly as it pertains to the transition of national education from Soviet to post- Soviet eras. I will compare/ contrast the ideological messaging of the school throughout both eras. This is meant to look towards an understanding of how education is intimately tied to political change, and the ways this is reflected in the development of civic subjects in an emergent capitalist market.”
At Rhodes, McCanless has served as a community development coordinator for the Kinney Program. As a 2016 Summer Service Fellow, he worked for Memphis’ “Fight for $ 15” initiative for fast food employees, and the previous summer, he worked as a research fellow with the Rhodes Institute for Regional Studies to assess and evaluate college matriculation and retention rates in Lake and Wayne Counties of West Tennessee.
“The Fulbright represents a great opportunity to understand education and culture in a broader context,” says McCanless. “I am extremely excited about the prospect of living and exploring Georgia alongside the people and cultures that make it such an awesome place! In the future, I intend to use this opportunity as preparation for graduate studies, where I hope to get my degree in American studies, concentrating on the cultures of schooling and theories of educational production.”
McCanless is a 2013 graduate of Calhoun High School.
Rhodes has been recognized by the U. S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs as a top producing institution for Fulbright U. S. Students for 20162017.