Mackenzie Doherty ’18 has been awarded a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship to Vietnam. She studied abroad there in 2016 and is looking forward to reconnecting with her homestay host family when she returns.
Doherty said she is anxious “to integrate into the community I’m placed in as best I can.” She said during her previous study abroad, she “learned a lot of Vietnamese phrases pretty quickly because I was so excited to be a part of a new place. I want to learn even more Vietnamese before I go and then continue pretty rigorous lessons when I’m there in order to communicate as effectively as possible and be a better English teacher.”
Major: Creative writing
Hometown: Worcester, Mass.
High School: Doherty Memorial High School
At Hamilton, Doherty was a research assistant for the Digital Humanities Initiative’s (DHI) Autumnal Sacrifice to Confucius project, in which she created metadata for pictures and videos of temples and sacrificial rituals taken throughout Taiwan and the PRC. She was also a research assistant on DHi’s Beloved Witness Project, where she digitized the work of poet Agha Shahid Ali’s life works to ensure their preservation.
Doherty was a 2017 Emerson research grant recipient, and an intern for Hamilton’s Annual Fund. She was poetry editor of Red Weather magazine and editor of Green Apple literary magazine
Last summer Doherty taught English and sculpture to middle school students at Generation Teach in Providence, R.I., and in summer 2016 she was a Generation Teach fellow in Boston, where she taught social studies and poetry.
When Doherty returns to the U.S., she’ll do a two-year fellowship at Bridge Boston, conducting behavioral-focused work with children (many who are or have been homeless or have experienced trauma or other severe difficulties) on emotional regulation and social skills. She also hopes to obtain a master’s in education or social work.
The Fulbright ETA Program places U.S. students as English teaching assistants in schools or universities overseas, thus improving foreign students’ English language abilities and knowledge of the United States while increasing their own language skills and knowledge of the host country. Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, the Fulbright is the largest U.S. international exchange program.
