Broncos Win Fulbrights and Goldwater Scholarship Awards

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Santa Clara University is proud to announce that five Santa Clara University students or alumni have won prestigious Fulbright and Goldwater awards, enabling them to pursue research in fields such as urban environmental mitigation, disability rights, agricultural innovation, or neuroscience.

“We are very proud of our students who have worked so hard inside and outside of class to earn these very competitive fellowships. We also commend their professors and mentors who encouraged them throughout the process,” said University President Kevin O’Brien, S.J. “The University is honored to count these young scholars as Santa Clara students and alumni, particularly as they put their Jesuit education into practice for service of others.”

Recent alumna Erin Ronald ’19 and seniors Griffin Garner ’20, Mariana Perera ’20, and Bridget Woody ’20 each won Fulbright Scholarships, to study in Sweden, Uganda, Brazil, and Jamaica, respectively, while junior Max Bjorni ’21 won the Goldwater Scholarship for outstanding science, engineering or math students. Two other SCU seniors, Ali Deambrosio ’20 and Graeme Hugo ’20 are Fulbright alternates, and will study in Uruguay and Chile, respectively, if other awardees are unable to participate.

Ronald will study urban climate mitigation policy in several cities in Sweden. Garner will work in Uganda to help smallholder coffee farmers incorporate best practices to thrive and grow amid climate change. Perera will study disability rights policy in Brazil. Woody proposed traveling to Kingston, Jamaica, to conduct research into how past technological innovations historically affected the colonized slave populations there, as a way to inform modern-day, ethical engineering innovation.

Bjorni, a double major in neuroscience and biology, was awarded a Barry Goldwater Scholarship, which recognizes the nation’s top college sophomores and juniors who intend to pursue research careers in the natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics.

About Santa Clara University
Founded in 1851, Santa Clara University sits in the heart of Silicon Valley—the world’s most innovative and entrepreneurial region. The University’s stunningly landscaped 106-acre campus is home to the historic Mission Santa Clara de Asís. Ranked among the top 15 percent of national universities by U.S. News & World Report, SCU has among the best four-year graduation rates in the nation and is rated by PayScale in the top 1 percent of universities with the highest-paid graduates. SCU has produced elite levels of Fulbright Scholars as well as four Rhodes Scholars. With undergraduate programs in arts and sciences, business, and engineering, and graduate programs in six disciplines, the curriculum blends high-tech innovation with social consciousness grounded in the tradition of Jesuit, Catholic education. For more information see www.scu.edu.