VT College of Science Quarterly August 2014 Vol. 1 No. 1 | Page 6

Physics undergraduate Mills receives
Fulbright Summer Institute position
Of the tens of thousands of college students in the United States,
only about 50 each year get
selected for a place with the prestigious Fulbright Summer Institute
summer scholarship program.
Adam Mills of Princeton, W.Va.,
is a rising junior majoring in physics in the College of Science and
will spend four weeks at Queen’s
University, Belfast, Ireland. He

was in the first cohort of students
enrolled in the Integrated Science
Curriculum program.
The US-UK Fulbright Commission was formed by treaty in 1948
and is the only bi-lateral, transatlantic scholarship program, offering summer programs in any field
at any accredited university in the
United States or the United Kingdom. The program was conceived

Adam Mills ejects the manipulator on a scanning probe microscope to make room for
a gold sample in the scanning chamber. Mills spent four weeks in Northern Ireland as
part of the Fulbright Summer Institute scholarship program.

to promote leadership, learning,
and empathy between nations
through educational exchange.
Fulbright Scholars are informal ambassadors for the United
States, according to Gary Long,
associate dean in the College of
Science, a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar at the Weizmann
Institute of Science in Rehovot,
Israel from 1990-91, and one of
Mills’ teachers in the Integrated
Science Curriculum.
“Fulbright Scholars are chosen
on their academic merit and
their ability to interact with other
cultures,” Long said. “Adam will
excellently represent the United
States as well as Virginia Tech.”
The opportunity for the summer
session was presented to Mills
through an email on the honors
list serve, and after some program
research and an application he
was selected for an interview.
“The application focused on
learning and the experiences
that have shaped me,” Mills said.
“The interview focused on what
I wanted to do with my life and
how I looked at myself. They were
looking for strong academics but

little travel experience, and I felt
like I had that.”
For Mills, who has never traveled outside the United States, the
news he had been accepted was
a great surprise. “I spent the two
weeks after the interview preparing myself for bad news,” he said.
“And now I’m looking forward to
meeting well-rounded, experienced, and intimidating people
– and I look forward to learning
from them. This program will
open my eyes to other cultures. I
expect Northern Ireland is a pretty
intense place with passionate
people.”
Mills left for Northern Ireland in
mid-July and came back in midAugust. While there he learned
about Northern Ireland in terms
of its political and cultural relationships within the United Kingdom and the world. He also took
part in some travel and learned
about his own heritage as well.
“Some of my father’s side of the
family is Irish and I wanted to find
out what that means. It was exciting exploring Northern Ireland
and gaining an understanding of
how other people live.”

New alum makes college video
Justin Kyker (‘13), a dual Biological Sciences and Cinema major,
created this video for the college’s 10th anniversary. After being
featured on Virginia Tech’s Facebook page, the post received more
than 20,000 views and more than 1,200 people watched the video.
Click the image at left to watch the video.
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College of Science Quarterly