Here’s proof that a Hunter College education can send you all over the world!
Four recent alumni are going abroad as Fulbright Scholars for the 2025 – 26 academic year: Sajida Ahmed MHC ’25, Alp Doymaz MHC ’25, Alison Juray ’24, and Andrew Loka ’25.
A fifth alum, Maya Savoie ’24, also was chosen for a Fulbright, but declined the scholarship for other opportunities.
Named for the late Senator J. William Fulbright (D-Ark.) and funded by the U.S. State Department, the Fulbright U.S. Student Program offers grants to promote U.S. interests through cultural exchange. It sends Americans to teach English in classrooms around the world and funds research across international borders.
Hunter College has been designated a “Top Producer” of Fulbright Scholars many times during the past 15 years, showing its impact as a public institution providing educational opportunities to diverse young talent. Inspired by the varied life experiences students bring to the classroom, Hunter’s faculty and staff invest deeply in student success. For more than 150 years, Hunter has been one of the nation’s most diverse higher-education institutions and one of its most effective engines of social mobility.
Ahmed majors in psychology and Arabic and is graduating with a GPA of 3.95. Last year, she won the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship to spend summer 2024 in Morocco. She has also worked for the CUNY Reading Corps, specializing as an early literacy tutor. Ahmed will teach English as a second language in Jordan next year and plans to pursue a master’s of education in school psychology.
Doymaz majored in biological sciences, compiling a GPA of 3.9 over his four years. He is a research assistant at Rockefeller University in the Paul Cohen lab, which studies how the genetic variability of adipose tissue drives substantially different metabolic rates among people and determines significant differences in weight and health outcomes. He will conduct research in Germany. After completing his Fulbright year, Doymaz hopes to enter an MD-PhD program.
Juray earned a BA in chemistry with minors in business studies and public health. She graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa and distinguished herself as an outstanding student leader in the Yalow Honors Program. She’s earning a master’s degree in health policy and economics at Weill Cornell, where she also volunteers at the Alonso Laboratory. For her Fulbright year, Juray will be joining a lab in Granada, Spain, that is researching the relationship between diabetes and pancreatic cancer. She plans to apply to MD-PhD programs.
Loka is a Roosevelt Scholar majoring in political science (international relations) and is graduating summa cum laude. He received a Grove Fellowship and the Mellon Public Humanities & Social Justice Fellowship, among other awards at Hunter and CUNY. His Fulbright will allow him to study the history of religious coexistence in Jordan, and how the Hashemite Kingdom maintains peaceful and positive relations between its religious minorities. After his Fulbright year, Loka plans to attend law school and then pursue a career in international law.
Hunter’s Office of Prestigious Scholarships and Fellowships has a stellar record of preparing students for competitive scholarships and fellowships. In recent years, the college has produced two Rhodes, three Marshall, seven Schwarzman, five Luce, eight Goldwater, and 43 Fulbright Scholars, among many other prestigious awardees.
