My Fulbright Journey: An ongoing, enriching experience

My name is Ziyad Ben Taleb and I’m from Libya. I was honored to be granted a Fulbright scholarship in 2010 and that’s when my academic trip commenced. I arrived to the United States in July of that year and began my Masters degree in Public Health at Florida International University under the Robert Stempel School of Public Health and Social Work.

Florida International University is the 15th-largest university in the United States with more than 45,000 students enrolled, and maintains a very diverse and vibrant community. The president of FIU is Dr. Mark B. Rosenberg who himself was actually a Fulbright scholar.

With much discipline and hard work, I was able to maintain a high GPA of 3.9, and was recently awarded membership to both the Golden Key Honor society, and the Phi Beta Delta Honor Society at FIU for my academic achievements. I successfully met the requirements for my degree and graduated on August 2012. Being a proud Fulbrighter, I wanted to continue to higher levels of education, therefore two weeks after my graduation, I was admitted to the PhD program in Environmental and Occupational health at FIU, and had the privilege to be supervised by one of the best professors in the field of genetics and human health.

Fulbright provided me with the confidence and the motivation to keep climbing the ladder of success, to pursue even higher levels of education and to promote cultural exchange between United States of America and my home country of Libya.