Everyone has a story to tell, be it your experiences as a Fulbright grantee, or your work with a Fulbright grantee.  The Fulbright Academy is working with others to document the impact of the Fulbright program on individuals and institutions.  We would love to hear some of your stories.  How did the program influence you, your family, your work?  Tell about your preparations for departure or what happened during your first week.

Get some ideas by reading some of the other stories (we have noticed that the link to the external database sometimes does not work the first time you click.  If that happens to you, please try it a second time.)  Then write and submit your story.  Submissions are immediately posted.  If you would like to change you posting, please post the amended edition and then send us an email.  We will delete the earlier version.

Over the years, several print collections of essays have been published.  FAST helped underwrite four recent collections, all of which are available from Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble (www.bn.com).

• Ambassadors of Peace: Experiences of Pakistani and US Exchange Scholars, edited by Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani and Saadia Hassan, iUniverse, Inc, 2007, 337 pages. 
• Beyond Boundaries: Reflections of Indian and US Scholars, edited by Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani and Nibir Ghosh, iUniverse, Inc, 2007, 587 pages. 
• Experiencing America: Through the Eyes of Visiting Fulbright Scholars, edited by Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani and Omer Idrees, Authorhouse, 2006, 146 pages. 
• Similarity in Diversity: Reflections of Malaysian and American Exchange Scholars, edited by Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani with Lynette Chua and Shahid Abrar Awan, iUniverse, Inc, 2006, 120 pages. 

Please contact FAST if you would like to contribute an essay to a future volume.  You also have an easier way to share your experiences and stories with other Fulbrighters and friends of the Fulbright Academy - submit them to our on-line archive.  It’s a great way to network and it’s really quite simple. 

In this short video, Fulbright scholars and leading scientists talk about the Fulbright Academy of Science & Technology and the important role that FAST and Fulbright scholars play in advancing education, reserach, policy and commerce.  (You may need to click on the play button twice to have it run.)

Quotes from the above video:

• "Organizations such as FAST are invaluable for bringing people together."
• "FAST is a window for others to see both sides."
• "When you support FAST, what you are getting is an incredibly committed, very experienced, and very diverse group of scientists, all whom share a commitment to rigor, a commitment to cross-cultural understanding. What you are getting is the ability to draw from a massive international intellectual base to bear on one particular problem."
• "FAST can make connections between academia and between government, between people and civilizations and cultures."
• "Our mission is to help Fulbrighters interact with each other so that they can do their work better, and hopefully, as a result of that, have a greater impact on the lives of others."

The Fulbright Academy of Science & Technology is an international network and think-tank established by alumni of the Fulbright Exchange Program. In partnership with its institutional members, FAST creates linkages and promotes the innovative work of Fulbright Scholars by organizing international meetings, high-level workshops and study committees.

If you would like to have an un-compressed copy of the video mailed to you on a CD, please send an email to ehoward@FulbrightAcademy.org.