The United States Educational Foundation in Pakistan (USEFP), in partnership with the US Mission to Pakistan, inaugurated Fulbright Centre at the Forman Christian College (FCC) on Thursday in order to promote opportunities for students interested in studying in the US.
USEFP Executive Director Rita Akhtar, FCC Rector Dr James Tebbe, the Beaconhouse National University (BNU) Faculty of Liberal Arts dean and a number of former Fulbright scholars were present on occasion.
The centre’s facilities for students include an Education USA advising centre, where advisers are available to provide unbiased and accurate information free of cost to students who hope to study in the US.
It also houses a Prometric test centre, which will administer many of the standardised tests required for admission to American universities, as well as professional exams and certificates.
The centre is named after the late Senator J William Fulbright, founder of the US Department of State’s flagship scholarship programme, the Fulbright Programme. The mission of Fulbright is to promote mutual understandings between people of other countries and the people of US through educational and cultural exchange.
The USEFP, a bi-national commission established by the governments of Pakistan and United States, supervises a variety of programmes that send Pakistani students, scholars and professional to American campuses while bringing American scholars to universities of Pakistan.
While addressing the ceremony, Rita Akhtar emphasised the centre’s enhanced resources for Pakistani students to explore American higher education. “Opportunities for Pakistani students to study in the United States have never been greater. The USEFP is here to help students learn more about these opportunities, as well as to guide them in every step of the process towards reaching their goals of studying in US universities.”
She said that since 1950, approximately 5,000 Pakistanis and more than 800 American have travelled to each other’s countries in the USEFP administered programmes. Rita added that the USEFP was currently administering 11 exchange programmes for Pakistani students, teachers and professionals. “The most important of these is the Fulbright Degree Programme. Under this programme since 2005, more than 1,400 students have completed or are scheduled to complete their masters (1,070 students) and doctoral degrees (340 students) in a wide variety of subjects at excellent universities in the US,” she added. She said the Fulbright programme operates in 155 countries, and that Pakistan’s Fulbright programme is the largest in the world.
Rita further explained that other programmes administered by the USEFP include the Global Understanding and Near-East South Asia Undergraduate Exchange Programmes under which more than 750 undergraduates have studied in the US for a semester or academic year.