From Washington University Athletics
Senior Kate Lee of the Washington University in St. Louis women's tennis team has been awarded a Fulbright Award, as announced Tuesday by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.
Lee has been selected as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant to South Korea. She will be teaching English to Korean students from July 2018-July 2019. Lee will receive six weeks of language and cultural training prior to her appointment.
"I previously taught English to children in who lived in areas outside of Seoul, and it was so impactful that I knew I wanted to do something similar again," commented Lee. "My biggest regret at that time had been my inability to converse deeply with my students due to my limited language skills, so I decided to study Korean for three years while at WashU."
Lee, who taught in the summer of 2014 in Cheonan and Sunchang, is a four-year varsity letterwinner for the Bears. She has a 4-5 record this season for the 12th-ranked Bears, and was an honorable-mention all-University Athletic Association (UAA) honoree at No. 5 singles a year ago. Lee has a 38-30 career mark, including a 30-18 mark in singles.
A three-time Academic All-UAA selection, Lee has a 3.85 grade point average and will graduate in May with a major in history and a minor in biology. She has deferred medical school for a year in order to participate in Fulbright.
"I by chance found out about the Fulbright Grant in the summer while I was applying to medical schools and decided to apply for it on a whim," Lee added. "When I actually found out that I received the grant, I could hardly believe it because it felt too good to be true. I am so thankful that I will have the chance to engage with students in South Korea and experience Korean culture to the fullest extent.
The Fulbright Program aims to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. Fulbright alumni include 59 Nobel Laureates, 82 Pulitzer Prize winners, 71 MacArthur Fellows, 16 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients, and thousands of leaders across the private, public and non-profit sectors. Since its inception in 1946, more than 380,000 "Fulbrighters" have participated in the Program.