Smith becomes Hanover’s third faculty member to earn Fulbright

Alexis Smith, associate professor of German, has earned a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Grant from the U.S. Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. She is just the third Hanover faculty member to earn the honor.

Smith received a Fulbright grant to translate the first volume of original diaries of Robert Schumann (1810-56), the famous German composer, pianist and music critic of the early Romantic era. The translations will allow scholars and musicians to understand Schumann’s works and the cultural environment of the period. She will conduct her work at the Robert-Schumann-Haus in Zwickau, Germany, where she will have access to the largest archive of Schumann’s materials.

Established in 1946, the Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange initiative. Approximately 800 U.S. Fulbright Scholarships are awarded each year, but only 10 for work/study in Germany. The program is funded through an annual appropriation made by Congress and participating governments, host institutions corporations and foundations around the world.

Since joining Hanover’s faculty in 2019, Smith has helped invigorate the College’s German program and Modern Languages and Cultures Department. She has worked to create updated majors and new courses, host campus workshops and presentations, and offer free K-12 classes in the community. In 2024, she was recognized as Indiana’s collegiate German teacher of the year by the Indiana Chapter of the American Association of Teachers of German. Last summer, she participated in the Internationaler Lehrerfortbildungskurs, a four-week professional development course at the International Summer School in Heidelberg, Germany.

Smith joins Mi Yung Yoon, professor of international studies, and the late Harve Rawson, professor emeritus of psychology, as Hanover’s faculty Fulbright Scholarship recipients. In 2011, Yoon conducted research about Korean bilateral development assistance to African countries at Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul. Rawson, who died in 2011, received a Fulbright to serve as distinguished professor of child psychology at the University of Bahrain in 1988. He also earned a scholarship in 1994 for study in Oman but could not attend due to war in the region.