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Common Elements: Fulbright-Hays Program
Education and International Studies
To identify the “common elements” in successful grant proposals to the U.S. Department of Education’s
(ED) Fulbright-hays Grant program, all four of the sample proposals provided by ED for the 2010-2011
AY awardees were read and annotated. The Fulbright-Hays program has two dominant features that
incorporate all aspects of its Request for Proposals: “Bang for the Buck” and “Alignment w/ Sponsor’s
Priorities.” The purpose of analyzing these “common elements” is to give your proposal a
competitive edge. Most institutions do this process backward: an applicant submits a proposal, and if the
proposal is rejected, the applicant requests to read the reviewers’ comments. Those comments make
explicit the elements that the reviewers would have liked to see but did not. Analyzing the proposals and
identifying the common elements up front increases the chances of a first-time (or second-time)
successful submission to this highly competitive program.
The matrix of the common elements in the Fulbright-Hays program was complex enough that it is not
presented as a summative narrative in one or two pages but as a full sentence outline of four pages. As
each element common is given, brief examples follow; keep in mind that these are only a few of the many
that could have been chosen from the sample proposals. The examples given below for each common
element are not meant to be prescriptive, only suggestive of what works for ED reviewers. Drafting
“common elements” notes is an exercise in aligning with precision your individual project with the goals
and priorities of the external sponsor (in this case, ED). The Fulbright-Hays program spans two fields:
Education and International Studies. Both fields are addressed in the main in the “Alignment w/
Sponsor’s Priorities” (section 2) below.
1. “Bang for the Buck.” The Fulbright-Hays program is strikingly a “bang for the buck” program.
a. Proposers made their “bang for the buck” explicit in their narratives.
i. UT-Austin: “The per capita cost of the proposed program in Brazil
($9,554/person; $5,280/person for travel expenses) should be weighed against the
impact that it will achieve through national distribution of the curriculum
units….”
ii. Claremont University: “It should be noted that our per diem (covering boarding,
meals, and $5/day for personal items) ranges from $65-$85/person. This is
considerably lower than the State Department’s per diem rate for Ho Chi Minh
City of $306/person.”
b. As opposed to some programs like that National Science Foundation’s “Transforming
Undergraduate Education in Science...” that have *no* cost sharing requirement, the
Fulbright-Hays proposals included a high proportion of cost sharing.
i. Claremont University requests $83,775 from Fulbright-Hays and provides
$320,025 from in-kind support and contributions.
ii. The Alliance of Associations of Teachers of Japanese (AATJ) makes it clear that
the total project costs are $191,338. Of this sum, $108,340 will come from
matching funds from non-federal sources and another $15,900 in expenses will
be picked up by participants ($800 each); only $67,148 out of the total $191,338
is requested from Fulbright-Hays program.
c. The proposers stress a high return from quantitative measures.
i. UT-Austin emphasizes that its Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American
Studies (LLILAS) is affiliated w/ 138 faculty, and “LLILAS Outreach presented
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Common Elements: Fulbright-Hays Program
Education and International Studies
to 320 educators, with current teaching loads of over 27,000 students, throughout
Texas.”
ii. UCLA details that U.S. participants will benefit from “42 hours of Arabic”
language instruction, plus “11 class lectures and additional lectures during guided
site visits.”
iii. Claremont University stresses that participants will receive 97 hours of classroom
instruction; 73 hours of praxis; 18 hours of language instruction; 28 group
activities; 24 group lunches; 5 hours of one-on-one “check in” sessions w/
faculty.
iv. AATJ clarifies that it is a “consortium whose constituent organizations represent
more than 2,000 Japanese language teachers in the United States as well as other
parts of the world.”
d. The proposers also promise a high return from qualitative measures.
i. UT-Austin notes that before national distribution, the new international
curriculum units will undergo “field testing by participants…structured to
evaluate classroom use, with feedback coming from teachers and students.”
ii. UCLA describes a program set up to “surpass…the goals of the California
Standards.”
e. Proposers ensure that real “bang for the buck” is delivered through the broadest
dissemination possible; they are promising to “share the wealth” through a variety of
means. The minimal broad dissemination is at the state level; most proposers guarantee
dissemination at the national level.
i. UCLA states that its African Studies Center will “create and maintain a
repository of Africa-related units that will be made available to educators
nationwide.”
ii. Claremont University states that upon return to California, participants will be
incorporated as “workshop leaders and curriculum presenters into on-going staff
development programs for educators throughout the state of California.”
iii. The broadest dissemination is consistently achieved through maximal use of
technological infrastructure.
1. UT-Austin notes that its “Latin American Network Information Center”
has “12,000 unique URLs,” “4 million hits a month,” and its curriculum
units from six previous Fulbright projects have “over 1,000 downloads
per month.”
2. UCLA states that U.S. participants will be able to “maintain linkages
with their Moroccan counterparts through the use of iEARN
(International Education and Resource Network), the world’s largest
global network of educators using the web, media, and IT to collaborate
on projects that enhance learning.”
iv. The proposers also get a lot of mileage from professional networks.
1. UT-Austin’s leaders will announce and present at “state and national
foreign language and social studies conferences, e.g., American Council
on the Teaching of Foreign Languages.”
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Common Elements: Fulbright-Hays Program
Education and International Studies
Finally, “bang for the buck” is realized through meticulous planning—and then more
planning.
i. Claremont University’s Orientation consists of 25-hour 2-unit course titled
“Orientation to Culturally Relevant and Cosmopolitan Teaching via Project
VOICE.” Claremont University also offers reviewers a five-page single-spaced
chart for “Itinerary” for the Vietnam sojourn.
2. Alignment w/ Sponsor’s Priorities. The successful proposals are designed in every way to carry
out the sponsor’s priorities, in the case of the Fulbright-Hays programs, the needs are dual—
educational and international.
a. Educational Priorities
i. The main educational priority in the Fulbright-Hays program is strengthening and
broadening the pre-college pipeline.
1. The UCLA program describes how it will broaden the educational
pipeline by noting that Los Angeles has a diverse population to call
upon, and that the UCLA program will “adhere to proactive recruitment
of minority teachers, educators of under-represented students, and
teachers from low-performing and under-resourced schools. The project
will ensure that teachers recruited reflect the diversity of not only Los
Angeles but society at large.”
2. UT-Austin’s program strengthens the pre-college pipeline this way: “By
creating curriculum resources for grades K-12, [the project] increases
student awareness of and interest in Latin America, thereby feeding
university programs in Latin American languages and area studies.”
3. AATJ’s program strengthens the pre-college pipeline this way: “The
availability of AP courses [in Japanese language and culture] means
increased enrollments of high school students at advanced levels, and
increased demand for high-quality instruction. The need for smooth
articulation between high school and college-level instruction is greater
than ever as a result of these new programs.”
4. Claremont University’s program strengthens the pre-college pipeline by
developing leadership in its participants: The pre-service teacher
candidates will be “early in their careers” and “by creating and then
presenting their multimedia memoirs for public viewing, they are
developing as educational leaders.”
b. International Priorities
i. For example, the U.S. has a critical need for improved teaching of certain
languages or area studies.
1. UCLA established its “National Resource Center for Africa” to “meet the
national need for Africa specialists by providing superior language
training and a firm grounding in area studies.”
2. UCLA’s proposed program for North Africa enhances knowledge of
Arabic which “serves the national need and interest to educate at a young
age the rising generation of American schoolchildren who will face the
f.
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Common Elements: Fulbright-Hays Program
Education and International Studies
challenge of communicating with their counterparts in Africa and the
Middle East.”
ii. For example, the U.S. wants increased global competence through in-country
experiences that allow genuine, experiential, two-way learning.
1. UT-Austin’s in-country program in Brazil includes performances and
interviews “experienced live and brought back to the United States
through video clips” so participants can “create lesson plans that could
only come from direct intercultural encounters.”
2. Claremont University participants will gather “authentic cultural artifacts
like packaging, application forms, toys, tickets, clothing, labels and
signs, etc.) for use in their classrooms.”
3. UCLA’s participants will benefit from “mentorship by Moroccan
educators” and the “mentorship component” is designed so that U.S.
participants will experience “an extended opportunity to interact one-onone with colleagues who can also serve as guides to society.”
4. AATJ’s program allows participants to “travel to other locations around
Japan for the purpose of collecting materials, visiting schools and
cultural and educational sites, receiving lectures and training from
experts on aspects of Japanese culture, and working on thematic units
that incorporate culture content into a language instruction context.”
iii. Given that preparing U.S. citizens to function optimally in the global arena is
important, most federal funds requested are for international travel.
1. UCLA requests Fulbright-Hays funds “to cover roundtrip international
airfare for 13 participants and one project director.” (Other costs are
covered by in-kind contributions.)
2. Claremont University stresses, “It is only Phase 2, the 5-week sojourn to
Vietnam for which we are seeking funding from Fulbright-Hays.”
3. AATJ requests only $67,148 out of $191,388 total project costs, and that
$67,148 covers travel expenses.
iv. To deepen the international learning, most proposers build in reflective learning
experiences for participants.
1. In the UCLA project, U.S. participants will engage in “blogging and
video sharing” to “track their own growth and development.” Also in the
UCLA project, a “[s]eminar cam will be primary visual diary for the
group.” Further, the UCLA projects also includes “pictures, short stories,
and journal excerpts” in its future repository of learning experiences.
2. Claremont University stresses that the participants will generate an
“auto-ethnographic multimedia memoir.”