Coventry Resident Wins Fulbright Research Fellowship

Lindsay Paiva, a resident of Coventry and senior at Connecticut College, has been selected to receive a U.S. Fulbright Student Program grant to conduct research in Italy for an academic year.

Fulbright fellows receive round-trip transportation to the host country, a living stipend, research allowances and medical insurance. Paiva is one of nine Connecticut College seniors and recent alumni selected to receive a fellowship this year.

“The Fulbright is a strong complement to the Connecticut College liberal arts experience, and to receive nine in one year is a testament to the College’s commitment to educate our students to be active citizens in a global society,” Connecticut College President Leo I. Higdon Jr. said. “I am very proud of these talented students and young alumni – for all they have accomplished and for the success I know they will achieve during their fellowships and beyond.” 

Paiva, an English major, Italian studies minor and scholar in Connecticut College’s Holleran Center for Community Action and Public Policy, will spend the year researching the “Tuscan Model” education system with Professor Enzo Catarsi, an education professor at the University of Florence.

The “Tuscan Model” is designed to increase the quality of life for Tuscan citizens by promoting lifelong learning through access to education and vocational training.

“I am interested in how this educational model operates theoretically, methodologically and pedagogically to produce and sustain educational opportunities for Tuscans of all ages,” Paiva said. “I hope to conduct interviews with program participants, especially those in the older cohort, in order to understand the outreach and access portions of the program.”

Paiva, who is also completing the elementary education certification program at Connecticut College, said a “spectacular” experience studying abroad last spring in Perugia, Italy, convinced her to apply for the Fulbright.

“I was entranced by the people and the places,” she said, adding that her Fulbright project was inspired by the time she spent teaching English at a local high school there. “The more time I spent there, the more I knew I just had to go back.”

 After she returns from Italy, Paiva hopes to teach elementary school or work for a youth development or education policy nonprofit. Eventually, she plans to pursue a graduate degree in education policy, with the goal of working for an education policy generation and implementation think tank.

Paiva will graduate from Connecticut College on Sunday, May 20.