UGA senior Leighton Rowell has been awarded a 2016-2017 Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship in Brazil. As an English Teaching Assistant, Leighton will help plan language learning activities and lead classes for university students who are training to become English teachers themselves. Outside of her teaching responsibilities, she plans to research public opinion on affirmative action in Brazilian universities. Since she began studying Portuguese and the history of Brazil, she has been fascinated by the country's demographic makeup and its race relations. Brazil alone imported about four million slaves during the slave trade and was also the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery, in 1888. Today more than half of Brazilians identify as black or mixed race — and yet, as in the United States, they remain underrepresented in areas such as government and higher education. Leighton hopes that as a Fulbright ETA in a public university, she will have the opportunity to directly observe the intersection of race, education, and policy in Brazil — and then use that experience to assess how similar policies might apply in the United States. Leighton is an honors student double majoring in History and Romance Languages. She will graduate this winter.
