Lyon student earns prestigious Fulbright Fellowship

April 16, 2007

Lyon senior Robert Bailey, like 36 Nobel Prize winners before him, has been awarded a fellowship from the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

Bailey, a native of Ward, Ark., is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Brent C. Bailey. He's double major in French and music with a Spanish minor.

He said the fellowship is an English teaching assistantship, and his grant period runs from early September through the end of June 2008

“I'll be a teacher's aide in the English program of a high school in the tiny country of Andorra 12 hours a week, and volunteer with a non-profit organization in my free time,” he said.

Andorra is located in the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain.

“I'm deeply honored and humbled to receive this award,” Bailey said. “The reality of it is still sinking in.”

As for career goals, he has “lots of ideas, but no solid plans.”

Bailey, who has served as the organist at First United Methodist in Batesville the past two years, will work this summer as an in-house French-English technical translator at Saint Jean Industries in Heber Springs.

In Spring 2006, Bailey studied in Poitiers, France, and the experience gave him “a raging case of wanderlust.”

“I applied to the Fulbright program just to see what would happen,” he said. “As the poet said, 'Hitch your wagon to a star,' and they must have seen something in my application they liked. That I actually got the fellowship really is still very surreal to me.”

Dr. Catherine Bordeau, Lyon's associate professor of French, said Bailey is the “most exceptional language student I have ever met.”

“He speaks French and Spanish fluently and has taught himself three other languages, including Catalan, the language spoken in Andorra,” Bordeau said. “He's also a very effective French tutor at Lyon. His knowledge and openness to others will make him an excellent English teacher and ambassador in Andorra.”

The Fulbright Fellowship program created through the efforts of the late Arkansas Sen. J. William Fulbright, who helped push it through the U.S. Senate in 1946. Considered to be one of the most prestigious award programs, it operates in 144 countries.

More Fulbright alumni have won Nobel Prizes than those of any other academic program, including two in 2002.

The Fulbright Program provides funds for students, scholars, and professionals to undertake graduate study, advanced research, university teaching, and teaching in elementary and secondary schools abroad. The grant pays airfare, a modest living stipend and health and accident insurance during his stay.

Cliff Jackson, Lyon '68, who received both a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship (now the Mellon Scholarship) and a Fulbright Scholarship to study at St. John's College, Oxford, is endowing the McMillan Post-Graduate Initiative, which is designed to assist Lyon College students such as Bailey in applying for prestigious post-graduate awards including the Fulbright, Rhodes, Truman, Rotary and Gates scholarships.

He established the McMillan Post-Graduate Initiative in honor of his mentor, Bill McMillan of Arkadelphia, a long-time member of the Lyon Board of Trustees, whom Jackson credits with assisting him to receive his two prestigious awards.

"I'm gratified by the immediate success of this project, and I congratulate Robert Bailey on his admission to this elite fraternity of scholars,” Jackson said.

Jackson is committed to working with Lyon students to encourage and support them in the pursuit of these prestigious awards, and he has met on campus with groups of interested students on several occasions.

Bailey said Dr. Virginia Wray, the W.C. Brown Professor of English, encouraged him to apply for the grant. He began working on his proposal, application and reference letters last summer. Part of the process was an on-campus interview with a panel including several Lyon faculty.

He received a letter in February saying he'd been recommended to the supervising agency in his host country, and on April 11, he received notice that he'd been selected for the award.

Bailey said he'd also like to thank Dr. Alan McNamee, the Frank and Marion Bradley Lyon Professor of Accounting and Lyon's Fulbright advisor, for his support through the process.

He also expressed gratitude to Dr. Catherine Bordeau, Dr. Russell Stinson, Dr. Martha Beck, Dr. Monica Rodriguez and Isabelle Tenace, the professors who wrote his letters of recommendation.

McNamee said Bailey is an exceptional individual and an outstanding student. As the Lyon College Fulbright Program Advisor, it has been a privilege to assist Bailey with the application process for this unique opportunity, he added.

“Through his award of an English Teaching Assistantship in the Principality of Andorra, he will greatly benefit students in that area of the world as well as spreading the ripples of goodwill to many unknown destinations,” he said. “He will represent Lyon College, the state of Arkansas and the U.S. in the finest possible way.”