Rufus King alum wins Fulbright travel award
Sojourner White, 21, has been awarded the prestigious Fulbright U.S. Student Award, designed to increase understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.
White, a graduate of Milwaukee Public Schools’ Rufus King International High School, will be spending the next academic year in Spain, teaching English in an elementary school and serving as a cultural ambassador. She will graduate from Bradley University in Illinois in May with a degree in psychology and Spanish.
“Her love for the Spanish lanture. for people and for different cultures — all of that lead to her excitement and interest in Fulbright,” said White’s mother, Venice Williams.
White studied abroad in Grenada, Spain, in the spring of 2015 and said she felt like she had “unfinished business there.”
“I wanted to make sure that the Spanish chapter of my life was complete before I started a new one,” White said as to why she is excited to return. “I’m already familiar with the country, but there is still so much to learn.”
The international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government provides grants for individually designed research projects and for English teaching assistant programs to recent college graduates, master’s and doctoral candidates, and young professionals. Only 989 students from Wisconsin have received the award since 1965.
Williams traces White’s interest in a program like Fulbright all the way back to middle school. “The seeds of her love for Spanish culture were planted at Roosevelt Middle School of the Arts,” Williams said.
White said her biggest goal as a Fulbright Scholar will be to fully immerse herself in that Spanish culguage, In addition to her teaching, White said she hopes to find opportunities to volunteer while in Spain.
Her desire to serve and be involved in community is rooted in her experiences growing up Milwaukee and attending MPS schools, White said.
“I owe a lot to Milwaukee and the supportive community that it was for me,” she said. “I had teachers who cared and really wanted to see me succeed.”
Williams, the executive director of Alice’s Garden and a mother of seven, said she gave all her children the same advice: “The world is yours to explore and yours to make better.”