Regis alumna, professor receive Fulbright awards

Mayra Perez Ruiz was on her lunch break at work when she received the email she had been waiting on for months. She gathered herself before finishing up her lunch break, and then began scanning the email with dread. 

It’s safe to say she was elated instead to read the news that she earned the opportunity of a lifetime: Perez Ruiz has been awarded the competitive Fulbright Student Award, which will send her to rural Spain for nine months to become an English teaching assistant. Perez Ruiz joins Regis Professor and Department of Education Chair Elizabeth Grassi, Ph.D., who received a Fulbright Award to study and teach language acquisition in Norway.

Fulbright Scholar Awards are prestigious fellowships that give scholars the opportunity to conduct research and teach abroad. According to the organization, alumni include 62 Nobel Laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, 78 MacArthur Fellows and thousands of leaders worldwide.

“It's still a shock,” Perez Ruiz said. “I see these emails coming in from the program itself, and I'm just like, ‘How is this real?’ It's real, but it's still quite a shock."

Perez Ruiz, who graduated in 2022 with her degree in political economics, with minors in politics and Spanish, applied for the award as a student. She is now the first Regis student to be awarded a Fulbright.

“It’s exciting because you never expect to be the first at something, especially at your school,” she said.

Grassi, who will be in Norway for one year, will conduct research on language acquisition with the Norwegian Center for Foreign Languages. She also will travel to high schools and secondary schools. There, she will discuss public schools in the United States and observe how Norwegian schools teach and study language acquisition with their immigrant and refugee populations. She also will work with Østfold University College, teaching in their teacher preparation program.

During her time in Norway, Grassi will be in Norwegian classrooms three to five days per week. Her goal is to connect Regis education students with Norwegian education students.

Grassi, who has spent all of her public school teaching career working with immigrant and refugee populations and started the Culturally and Linguistically Diverse program at Regis, is currently learning to speak Norwegian, an experience that has flowed into the Regis classroom.

“I'm trying to learn Norwegian right now, and I'm talking to them (students) about what the acquisition process looks like,” Grassi said. “It's been fun."

As part of her time in Spain, Perez Ruiz will work as a teaching assistant. Although Perez Ruiz did not study education at Regis, she always leaned into leadership and teaching skills in the classroom. Perez Ruiz, who is fluent in Spanish and whose parents are from Mexico, was interested in applying for a Fulbright position in Spain because she wanted to explore a culture close to her roots.

“I chose Spain because there wouldn't really be too much of a language barrier, and it connects to my roots in a way that I would like to explore,” Perez Ruiz said. “My mother's great grandparents were immigrants from Spain, as we recently found out, and it's just kind of like a self-identity journey as well.”

As she moved through the application process, Perez Ruiz received guidance from Professor and Peace and Justice Studies Department Chair Eric Fretz, who is the Regis Fulbright Program associate and a 2016 Fulbright scholar. While Perez Ruiz sought guidance toward the end of her application process, Fretz said she completed much of the process on her own. 

“It’s just a testament to Mayra’s will and independence,” Fretz said in an interview with Perez Ruiz, telling her: “You really got this on your own.” 

For Regis, the two awards are the most recent in a proud Regis history of Fulbright Awards. Most recently, in March, Assistant Professor of Communication and Fulbright scholar Emily Stones traveled to Japan to begin teaching at Tokai University and Nihon University.