By Chuck Wasserstrom, director of communications, UTC
Oleander Reagan-Artemis can count on two hands the number of times she’s traveled outside of the state of Tennessee – and she’s never been out of the country.
It’s time to get a passport.
Reagan-Artemis, a May 2022 graduate of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, has won a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Romania. Participants in the ETA program help teach English while representing the U.S. as cultural ambassadors.
Reagan-Artemis is the third UTC student in recent years selected for the prestigious Fulbright award. In spring 2019, political science major Simone Edwards became the university’s first Fulbright recipient since 1965, traveling to Guatemala for her study abroad experience. The following year, political science major Hannah Horton was selected as a Fulbright Scholar to South Korea.
“I’m a first-generation college student, so this is the biggest of deals to me,” says Reagan-Artemis, who majored in modern and classical languages and literatures and was a UTC Brock Scholar, graduating summa cum laude. “Going to college at all was a big deal, but now I’m going to teach at a university in another country. That’s pretty cool.”
Reagan-Artemis is one of seven UTC students or recent graduates who advanced to the semifinal level during the current Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award cycle – the highest total in the university’s history. None of the others has learned their fate.
The Fulbright Program is the flagship international academic exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government, providing awards to approximately 8,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists and professionals each year. Founded in 1946, the program has partnerships with more than 140 countries worldwide.
A national screening committee initially reviewed eligible applicants in the U.S. and then made recommendations to the in-country administering agency – either a Fulbright Commission or U.S. Embassy.
As an English teaching assistant, Reagan-Artemis will partner with a local English language teacher at a Romanian university. That location and other program specifics will be forwarded to Reagan-Artemis in a few weeks.
“We help in the classroom with language development and conversation skills,” Reagan-Artemis says. “Outside of that, serving as cultural ambassadors for the U.S. can take the view of many things. Past Fulbright ETAs have done cooking classes, conversation clubs and tea parties. My additional project is a poetry pen pal club.”
To accomplish that, Reagan-Artemis will speak with English teachers who want to work on poetry and writing with their students.
“What we’d do is explore popular styles of poetry from the U.S. and Romania, send poems back and forth to each other and just learn about each others holiday traditions, food and local histories,” Reagan-Artemis says.
Leslie Pusey, director of the Office of National Scholarships for UTC, lauded Reagan-Artemis’ “interest in deep learning” as an honors student.
“Olly is the sort of person that defies expectations, being not just interested in but also a scholar on the Latin side. She’s detailed-oriented, always thinking ahead and thinking of every possibility.”
Being a scholar on the Latin side begs a question: Why Romania?
“My first response is actually, ‘Of course, Romania,’ but I understand it can seem unconventional for a Latin teacher to say, ‘Of course, Romania,’” Reagan-Artemis says with a laugh.
“For me, it makes sense. Romania has me hooked from history. The great Roman poet, Ovid, was exiled there in 8 AD or so. The educational reforms from the revolution in 1989 to the current work being done to preserve Roman ruins in Romania also pique my interest.”
Previous teaching experience is one of the tenets of the program, which takes place from October 2023-June 2024.
“I was a teaching assistant at UTC and then I taught where I went to high school for a semester with my former Latin teacher,” says Reagan-Artemis, a 2018 graduate of Sevier County High School.
While Romanian proficiency is not a requirement, having a passport is. Traveling to Bucharest for orientation in September will be Reagan-Artemis’ first time outside the U.S.
“This experience will help me be less of a scaredy-cat,” she says. “I’m famously a nervous, anxious person, and I have to get over the fear of going somewhere else.
“Being removed from my comfort zone, exposed to these new situations and not only having to learn – but also to lead in these new places – is going to give me that push to go to grad school, to teach in a classroom, to be somewhere I’ve never been before with more confidence.”