A leader in promoting global engagement, reflecting diversity and embracing different perspectives

Recognized for its strong engagement, as an Hispanic-Serving Institution, with the Fulbright Program — the U.S. government's flagship international academic exchange program — UC Santa Barbara has been named as a Fulbright HSI Leader for 2024. 

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) annually honors select HSIs that demonstrate noteworthy support for Fulbright exchange participants and encourage administrators, faculty and students at HSIs to engage with Fulbright on campus. 

The Fulbright HSI Leaders Initiative also highlights the strength of HSIs as destinations for international students and scholars. 

This is the fourth consecutive year that UCSB has been named to the list. The university was first designated as an HSI in 2015.

The 2024 honorees — 51 institutions in all — were announced today during the International Plenary Session of the annual conference of the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU).

“Fulbrighters from HSIs contribute to the program’s goal of reflecting the full diversity, perspectives and talents of the American people,” said Scott Weinhold, senior bureau official for ECA, in commending the latest cohort of Fulbright HSI Leaders.

For the current 2024–2025 academic year, three UC Santa Barbara graduate students are conducting research abroad as Fulbright Fellows:

• Anna Boser, of the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, is in Zambia,  pursuing her project, "Seizing the rain: Locally Initiated Irrigation for a More Climate Resilient Zambia." 

• Carlo Broderick, also of the Bren School, and of UCSB’s National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, is in Paraguay for his project, "Satellite Vision in Paraguay: Enhancing Land Use Economics Through Artificial Intelligence."

• Natalya Rodriguez, with the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, is in Japan for her project, "Threatened Threads: Weaving Values in Heritage Textile Production in Okinawa, Japan"

The highly competitive Fulbright U.S. Student Program is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. Recipients of Fulbright awards are selected on the basis of academic and professional achievement, as well as their record of service and leadership potential in their respective fields.

Since its founding in 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided over 400,000 talented and accomplished students, scholars, teachers, artists, and professionals of all backgrounds and in all fields with the opportunity to study, teach, and conduct research abroad. Fulbrighters exchange ideas, build people-to-people connections, and work to address complex global challenges.  

Fulbright is a program of the U.S. Department of State, with funding provided by the U.S. Government. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations, and foundations around the world also provide direct and indirect support to the program.

The Fulbright Program implements a wide range of initiatives to ensure that its participants reflect all aspects of the diversity of U.S. society and societies abroad. In addition to HACU, the Fulbright Program also cultivates relationships with external stakeholders, including the White House Initiative on HBCUs, Diversity Abroad, UNCF, the National Clearinghouse on Disability and Exchange, the American Association of Community Colleges, and Mobility International, among many others.