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Three Oles win Fulbright awards to teach and study overseas, a fourth named an alternate

St. Olaf Class of 2025 alumni (counterclockwise, from top left) Benjamin Gusdal, Penuel “Blue” Nawa, and Jacob Wilde have been awarded Fulbright grants, and Ava Craven (top right) has been named an alternate for the prestigious award. 

Three recent St. Olaf College graduates have been offered grants to study and teach abroad during the 2025–26 academic year by the Fulbright U.S. Student Program, and a fourth has been named an alternate for the prestigious award.

The Fulbright Program was created and funded by Congress in 1946 to promote international goodwill through the exchange of students and scholars in all areas of education, culture, and science.

“At a moment when we find the future of the Fulbright Program is uncertain and under political scrutiny, we are especially proud of our most recent applicants and awardees and all of the faculty and staff who support them,” says St. Olaf Director of External Fellowships and Professor of Political Science Doug Casson. “These students and alums contribute to a long tradition at the college supporting this pillar of American diplomacy and its mission to foster global understanding and cooperation.”

Applicants to Fulbright at St. Olaf are supported by a robust team of faculty and staff members who help students and alumni connect with nationally competitive fellowship opportunities. Since 1949, St. Olaf has produced more than 200 Fulbright recipients. Last year alone, five Oles received Fulbright awards. In recent years, St. Olaf recipients have contributed to research projects and teaching fellowships that have focused on topics ranging from how policies impact teacher recruitment and retention to climate change-resilient agricultural practices.

Here are this year’s Fulbright award recipients:

Jacob Wilde ’25 from Crystal, Minn., graduated with a Bachelor of Music in voice performance. Wilde proposed a project focused on researching, digitizing, translating into English, and performing Soviet-era classical vocal music. He will be supported and supervised by Victoria Tcacenco at the Academy of Music, Theatre, and Fine Arts in Chisinau, Moldova. Focusing on Moldovan composers, including Zlata Tcaci, Iulia Tibulschi, as well as other post-Soviet composers such as Zara Levina and Nina Makarova, this project will culminate in a series of at least five performances of music by different lesser-known Soviet-era composers.

Penuel “Blue” Nawa ’25 from Texas majored in English, creative writing, and education. He will serve as an English Teaching Assistant in Turkey. Shaped by diverse experiences as a first-generation, Black, low-income migrant living in both Zambia and the United States, and as a TRIO McNair Scholar, Nawa embodies “a nuanced definition of the American dream.” With his experience as an English as a Second Language teacher, writing tutor, and Summer Bridge writing class teaching assistant, Nawa plans to provide the highest quality of teaching at Turkish universities, putting theory into practice so students of all cultural and educational backgrounds can succeed.

Benjamin Hagander Gusdal ’25 from Shoreview, Minn., majored in mathematics, physics, and political science. Gusdal proposed to examine the relationship between the Norwegian oil industry and its progressive climate policies. With the use of mixed methods, such as elite and non-elite interviews, studying scholarly sources, and analyzing empirical data, his project will investigate whether the socioeconomic benefits of Norway’s wealthy oil sector serve as an obstacle or a catalyst for achieving its climate goals, examine how citizens and policymakers perceive the interplay between the oil industry and environmental objectives, and consider what lessons other nations can draw from Norway’s unique position.

In addition to the three Fulbright recipients, Ava Craven ’25 from Delafield, Minn., was selected as an alternate for her research project in Croatia. Majoring in environmental studies, Craven proposed to study the “crèching behavior” — the tendency to care for chicks collectively — in juvenile songbirds and how it relates to resilience. She also hopes to work with the nonprofit association BIOM, participating in their month-long bird ringing program in Ucka, Croatia. By seeking to understand how juvenile birds survive, Craven hopes that her research might help to mitigate juvenile mortality rates and respond more effectively to global avian population declines.

Across the U.S., the program awards approximately 1,900 grants annually in all fields of study and operates in more than 140 countries worldwide. According to the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, “through generations of war and peace, the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Program has been a bipartisan pillar of American diplomacy — an enduring symbol of our nation’s commitment to mutual understanding and diplomacy, academic excellence, and international cooperation. It has promoted U.S. interests and global stability. Fulbright alumni have gone on to become leaders of government, industry, academia, arts, and culture in every part of the world.”