Josh Grace, a 2006 graduate of Point Loma Nazarene University (PLNU) in the history department, was recently awarded a specified Civilization Initiative grant from the Fulbright Scholar Program. He will use the grant to spend the next year studying and researching in a refugee resettlement in northern Tanzania.

Fulbright scholarships are highly competitive and Grace is one of only 40 winners the grant received. The Fulbright organization works to foster cross-cultural understanding in many fields across the globe.

Grace, who will also get married later this summer, had to turn down a four-year fellowship in African Studies at Boston University (BU) in order to accept the Fulbright.

“I was ecstatic, but conflicted,” he said about winning the scholarship. I accepted the BU offer and then rejected it a week later when I found out about the Fulbright – there was no way to accept both, unfortunately. It was hard to turn down a four-year deal from a good African Studies Program like BU, but individual research in Tanzania and the language skills cannot be replicated in the best of graduate schools.”

Grace studied in Africa at the University of Dar es Salaam in 2003-04, where he met his fiancé, Breanne Thornton. He’ll spend a month brushing up on his Swahili before heading into the field near Tanga in Tanzania. Thornton works in San Diego for the International Rescue Committee, which has an office in Dar es Salaam. The couple hopes that she can be transferred there.