The Fulbright Program provides opportunities for U.S. service members to broaden their military experience and prepare for the next phases of their careers, through study, teaching, and research abroad. The language and cultural expertise and professional skills they develop through Fulbright enhances the effectiveness of America’s military, developing skills that make the United States and the world safer and more secure.
David Holdridge and Elizabeth Montoro are two Fulbrighters at early stages of their military careers. Through the program, they are gaining international experience to expand the knowledge and skills that will position them to succeed in their future military assignments.
After enlisting in the Army out of high school, Holdridge enrolled at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville through the U.S. Army’s Green to Gold Scholarship program. When he graduated in 2024 as a commissioned U.S. Army Officer with a forestry degree, he received a Fulbright award to Indonesia to research how the biomass from palm oil production can restore soil that has been degraded by tin mining.
As a Fulbrighter, Holdridge is serving on active duty as part of the Army’s Warrior-Scholar program. “The opportunity to advance the State Department’s mission of diplomacy in Indonesia is a great honor, and the language training and environmental research I am able to conduct will propel me in my career as an Army Engineer Officer.”
Montoro, a recent graduate of Pitzer College, is also on active duty. As a Petty Officer 3rd Class in the Coast Guard Reserve, Montoro is researching maritime law in the U.S. and Europe through her Fulbright award to Italy. Montoro explained to the U.S. Coast Guard News that she is drawing on her prior study abroad and her experience supporting Operation Vigilant Sentry in Key West the summer before her junior year to complete her research. She is studying how different countries interpret international maritime law and its impacts on search and rescue (SAR) operations during migrant interdictions.
Montoro is not the first Fulbrighter from Pitzer with a military affiliation. Pitzer has graduated Fulbrighters in each of the five branches of the military—the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Marines, and the U.S. Navy, and now the U.S. Coast Guard—according to Professor Nigel Boyle, who serves as Pitzer College’s Fulbright Program Adviser. Boyle says that Fulbright has provided opportunities for military-affiliated graduates to teach and study in locations like South Korea, Moldova, Indonesia, Thailand, and Kyrgyzstan, and that these individuals have earned 13 combat medals between them.
Veterans Benjamin Rich and Sara Sajer both participated in the Fulbright Program while simultaneously serving in the military; the language skills, cultural knowledge, and professional development were instrumental in their subsequent Army deployments. Now they look back on how Fulbright supported their military careers and helped prepare them for future careers as veterans.
Rich graduated through Purdue University’s Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC), and used his Fulbright in South Korea to learn the theory and practice of strengthening international relations in trade, security, and emergency preparedness.
Sajer was an ROTC cadet and graduate of the University of Delaware when she started both her active-duty service in the U.S. Army and her Fulbright English Teaching Assistant award in Kosovo. Sajer says her Fulbright prepared her for her seven-year career as a U.S. Army intelligence officer. She drew on her experience engaging with local Albanian and Serbian communities in Kosovo to support her first assignment back in the United States, conducting research and giving lectures on political tensions in Kosovo at the U.S. Army Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute in the U.S. Army War College.
Soon after, she was selected to serve a counter-ISIS mission in Iraq and Syria, which she attributes to the skills she developed through Fulbright.
“My Fulbright experience equipped me with confidence, active listening skills, and resolve,” she explains. “My team and I successfully trained our Kurdish partners in our tactics. When I took a step back, I realized that I had been channeling my English Teaching Assistant role during the entire mission.”
Now a law student at the University of Pennsylvania, Sajer serves as the first-year representative to the Penn Law Veterans Club and Veterans Law Project. She believes her experiences with Fulbright and in the Army have taught her to “balance curiosity with conviction and strategy with intuition,” and that both shaped her into “a self-starter and also a leader who can motivate a team around a common goal.” She plans to draw on these skills in her career as an attorney, and hopes to continue to manage projects with international reach.
Sajer has mentored dozens of other service members to apply for the program, noting that Fulbrighters “bring a much-needed cultural fluency and regional expertise to the ranks.” She reflects that that Fulbrighters use diplomatic skills and “are poised to share their lessons learned with their teammates and reframe their missions in context.”
Fulbright can also provide a valuable bridge from military to civilian life for veterans who have already completed their service. After serving as a noncommissioned officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, Austin Sowers earned a degree from Arizona State University (ASU), but missed the sense of a shared common goal of public service he felt in the Marine Corps.
Through the Marines, Sowers developed significant international experience in 14 countries; he “taught firearms safety and training classes in Greece, worked with Iraqi Security Forces on developing Junior Leadership courses outside of Baghdad, and trained alongside Afghan Commandos in Bagram, just to name a few,” he explains. “These experiences taught me the value of putting myself in the place of my counterparts, observing the world through their own lens of religion, customs, and taboos.”
With the support of ASU’s Fulbright Program Adviser Kyle Mox, Sowers is now a Fulbright ETA in Honduras. Sowers teaches at a bilingual secondary school and at the University of Francisco Morazan teachers’ college, and volunteers to provide free English-language workshops to youth facing hardships such as fires, floods, and Dengue Fever in locations where there is no access to medicine, clean water, or security from gang violence. Sowers says, “Working in Honduras has allowed me to develop a first-hand sense of what our neighbors need.” His military training has taught him leadership and discipline, as well as “how to prioritize and execute short term objectives and long-term goals.” He believes the skills he gained through his Marine Corps service and Fulbright align to create mutually beneficial relationships between the United States and Latin American countries, and both will make him successful in his future career.
U.S. Fulbright Program – Military Personnel Resources
Applicants with military service obligations in any branch (United States Army, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard) are eligible to participate in the Fulbright Program pending command approval. Those enrolled in military academies or university Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) programs may apply to participate in the program as their first assignments immediately following commissioning. Mid-career Service Members may apply to participate in the fellowship opportunity as a broadening assignment. Veterans, defined by Congress as those who have honorably separated from service and do not have an outstanding service obligation, are given preference in selection per Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board policy. See Fulbright U.S. Student Program Guidance for Military-Connected Applicants for details.