Enrollment for the 2016 Academic Year at the New York Film Academy College of Visual & Performing Arts (NYFA) includes a cohort of 10 outstanding international graduate students attending the Academy under the Fulbright Foreign Student Program.
The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. The Fulbright Foreign Student Program enables graduate students, young professionals, and artists from abroad to research and study in the United States for one year or longer at U.S. universities or other appropriate institutions.
This year’s NYFA Fulbright Program group is the largest to date, and represents nine countries: Angola; Bahrain; Bulgaria; Egypt; Finland; Indonesia; Lithuania; Spain; and Uruguay. These students are enrolled in the graduate departments of filmmaking, screenwriting, documentary filmmaking, photography, and film and media.
In the past eight years, NYFA has hosted more than 40 Fulbright students from 22 countries, with every world region represented. NYFA is also honored to have four current faculty members that have received Fulbright fellowships. “The New York Film Academy is extremely proud to be a Fulbright Center of Academic Excellence, and to welcome extremely talented and creative new Fulbright graduate students every year,” said Jim Miller, New York Film Academy’s Vice President of Strategic Initiatives. Miller continued, “For a small higher education institution with a special focus, such as NYFA, the number of foreign Fulbright students is very impressive, and we are honored that these gifted artists have chosen our institution at which to accomplish their educational goals.”
A welcome dinner for the new Fulbright students was hosted by Dr. Jose Siles (president of the Fulbright Association’s LA chapter) and Miguel Cruz (film and TV director, NYFA director of Fulbright initiatives, Fulbright alum ‘05, and the vice president of the Fulbright Association’s LA chapter).
Dr. Siles, a Fulbright postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and Professor Cruz discussed different aspects of the Fulbright experience, and opportunities for our young students in the vibrant Fulbright community of Los Angeles. They also reinforced the close collaboration between NYFA and the Fulbright Association Chapter that has produced common events such as the successful 2015 TEDxFulbright conference. Very recently, NYFA faculty curated the visual presentations that will be shown at the upcoming National Fulbright Association Conference held this month in Washington, DC.
During the dinner, students and faculty had the opportunity to brainstorm about common projects, such as an exclusive visit for our Fulbrighters to the JPL premises in Pasadena and the possible Fulbright Film Festival to be hosted by NYFA in 2017.
It was a wonderful event during which the students had the opportunity to learn more about each other and about the Fulbright mission and community.
“Educational exchange can turn nations into people, contributing as no other form of communication can to the humanizing of international relations.”
– J. William Fulbright, 1983
These guests are not faculty and do not teach at NYFA, but they have appeared to share their stories and experience with our students. As guest speakers are scheduled based on their availability, NYFA cannot guarantee whether a guest speaker will visit during a student’s attendance or who that guest speaker may be. This guest speaker forum is not part of any NYFA curriculum and attendance at guest speaker events is purely voluntary. Students should be aware that guest speaker events do not represent a job opportunity nor are they intended to provide industry connections.