Fulbright Award Winner Caps Successful Year for Competitive Fellowships

Sammy Segeda ’23 will be teaching English in Laos for the 2025-26 school year through the program. Three students and one other alumna also had impressive success in nationally competitive fellowships.

Sammy Segeda '23 is currently a career success coordinator with American Needs You, a nonprofit organization that works with first-generation and low-income college students to help them meet their professional goals.

This September, Sammy Segeda ’23 will start her Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship in Laos, a country she has never visited that speaks a language she is just now beginning to learn. Far from finding that intimidating, Segeda chose to apply for the Laos program because the country is unlike anywhere she has studied before.

“I really wanted to expand my knowledge of Asia and extend to a different region because there is great value in being well-rounded,” Segeda said. “Laos, specifically, I thought was interesting because it is the smallest country in Southeast Asia but has the highest ethnic diversity. Additionally, the dominant religion and values of Buddhism in Laos offer a compelling cultural contrast with the more individualistic ethos common in the United States, which really intrigued me. There is just so much I want to learn and absorb.”

Although the program doesn’t start in Laos until September, preparation has already begun. Fulbright recipients were notified last month, and since then Segeda has been working her way through a 35-page packet about Laos that was provided by the U.S. State Department’s Institute for International Education (IIE), which runs the Fulbright program.

So far Segeda’s studying has been focused on a mixture of logistics and cultural competency, such as learning the ways Buddhist tradition influences everything from clothing to gestures (important for avoiding being unintentionally rude).

From the time Segeda arrived at Washington College from her home in the Poconos as a first-year student, her passion for learning about other cultures was apparent through her work, according to political science professor Carrie Reiling, who also works with students and young alumni on applications to the Fulbright program and other nationally competitive fellowships.

“I met Sammy as a student in my First Year Seminar class, and it was a joy to see her grow as a student and a person throughout her time at Washington College. Her study abroad experience in Korea was formative in shaping her interest in pan-Asian culture and in women’s rights. I sat on her International Studies honors thesis committee and was impressed by her writing skills and by the insight she brought to Korean cultural politics and language,” Reiling said. “I’m thrilled that she earned a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Laos. It will serve her future well, and she will be an outstanding representative of the United States in Laos.”

Many of the U.S. students and recent alumni in the Laos cohort are already on a group chat with the program. In July they will have a four-day pre-orientation online, then the first month in Laos will be in the capital, Vientiane, for intensive language training and courses on lesson planning and how to teach English as a second language. Segeda and her cohort are still waiting on some details, such as where their eventual assignments will be and how much the stipend for living expenses will be, but the program seems to be moving forward, despite some political uncertainty — in the United States, not Laos.

“The current administration and its policies have attacked spaces of academia and governing departments across the US, and Fulbright is no exception. Staff of the Fulbright Commission and IIE have fought greatly to keep this program going, despite ongoing political pressures,” Segeda said. “The new cohort of 2025-26 Fulbrighters are met with fear and uncertainty, but we have a strong sense of hope that we will be able to carry out our work and continue to bridge cross-cultural boundaries together.”

Since graduating from Washington College in May of 2023, Segeda has used both her international studies major and her journalism, editing, and publishing minor professionally, but most of what she has been up to fits best with where she is headed next year: education. 

After completing the Trilateral Youth Empowerment Program of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, Segeda began tutoring part-time while looking for full-time work. She found that first job with the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2024, but like many young alumni, she was still questioning what she wanted to do. So she reached out to Reiling.

“I asked her if she could jump on a Zoom and just talk about life because I was facing professional and personal hardships, wondering if I'm doing something wrong or what else is out there for me. And then she brought up Fulbright again,” Segeda said. “Carrie Reiling has really been my biggest motivator for applying.”

Reiling first suggested the Fulbright to Segeda during her junior year, and Segeda had applied in 2023, earning an alternate designation. Reiling emphasized the impact the international program could have on Segeda, who also spoke with political science professor Andrew Oros about the idea. He reminded her of the impact the Fulbright program has had on so many careers and the opportunities it opens.

“It was nice to have both of those sides from the people that I really look up to the most. Both are very true. It can be really good for me personally and professionally,” Segeda said. “I don't know exactly what it's going to be, but it's going to be good.”

While the Fulbright may be the best known, several other awards earned by Washington students and alumni this year are equally exclusive and prestigious. Julianna Sterling ’23 earned an alternate designation for the highly competitive Fulbright Open Study Award in France.

Amelia Watson ’27 and Nathan Michel ’27 both earned Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships, which provide study abroad funding. (Watson used the scholarship for a program in Bermuda and Michel studied in Belize.)

Like the Fulbright and Gilman programs, the U.S. Department of State also runs the Critical Language Scholarship Program, through which Keira Burger ’27 earned a grant to study Japanese. The CLS Program is designed to promote rapid language gains and essential intercultural fluency in regions that are critical to U.S. national security and economic prosperity.

“Winning these awards is a signal that these students put in the time and effort to do something extra and important, even if winning wasn’t a guarantee, and it shows – not only to me but also to future graduate school committees and employers – that a student is curious about the world and that they know how to be adaptable to different circumstances and can get along with all kinds of people in different cultures,” Reiling said. “Many of our programs set students up for awards, including the First Year Seminar program to learn how to research and write, our semester-long and short-term study abroad programs to introduce students to in-depth education abroad, and completing an SCE as an independent research project or an in-depth examination of their field.”

— Mark Jolly-Van Bodegraven