Pending U.S. State Department medical clearance, Piotr H. Kosicki, Editor-in-Chief of Volume XXX of The Stanford Review, has received one of the Institute for International Education’s Fulbright Scholarships for study abroad in Poland in the 2005-06 academic year. Mr. Kosicki will use this award to continue his research into political Catholicism in contemporary Europe .

For U.S. students, the Fulbright offers its recipients one academic year of sponsorship in which they can further their studies at foreign universities, conduct research, or teach.

Mr. Kosicki, however, unlike many students, does not see the grant as an all-expense paid “vacation,” but rather as both a merit-based reward and as a mission. Mr. Kosicki believes that the Fulbright offers students not only the chance to develop as researchers and scholars, but also “gives students an opportunity to serve as ambassadors for the United States .”

So what tips does Mr. Kosicki have for others who wish to win a Ful­bright? Two factors stand above the others, and these factors are closely intertwined. First of all, you must design a solid research program. Second, you must find people who will back you in that program and get to know them well enough that they can recommend you with confidence.

The Fulbright application requires three letters of recommendation from university professors, which must remain confidential. Obtaining three strong letters was not a problem for Mr. Kosicki, as he had developed strong relationships with the three faculty members he asked for recommendations, to the point where they actually knew him and his interests before he even planned on applying for a Fulbright to Poland .

Just as important as developing relationships with Stanford faculty was developing mentor relationships with scholars in the nation in which he wanted to study. During the summer after his junior year, Mr. Kosicki gave a paper at the Special Warsaw Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities, run by the University of Warsaw ’s Center for East European Studies. There, he “made connections that uniquely positioned my application,” meeting scholars who not only were willing to support his Fulbright application, but who in fact were a deciding factor in his choice to apply. Mr. Kosicki’s Polish supporters included Prof. Jan Malicki, director of the University’s Center for East Euro­pean Studies; Prof. Leszek Zasztowt, who chaired the panel in which Mr. Kosicki participated; and Mr. Zbigniew Nosowski, Editor-in-Chief of Wiez , Poland ’s leading Catholic intellectual journal. Each of these people read his proposal and provided feedback that strengthened not only his application, but also his ability to pursue a success­ful research program. As Mr. Kosicki put it, “They knew where I was com­ing from and what I wanted to do.”

From these scholars he obtained letters of support to supplement his application. The Institute for International Education permits the submission of multiple letters, which need not be confidential. However, the ultimate purpose of making academic connections is not to obtain letters of support. It is rather to develop personal relationships for years to come.

Mr. Kosicki mentioned that other factors, such as a high GPA and a strong CV are also quite important, as is association with a prestigious university like Stanford. Not having to worry about inventing a personal profile allows candidates to focus more on designing a detailed, effective research proposal.

Did being Editor-in-Chief of The Review help Mr. Kosicki at all along the way toward winning the Fulbright? “Running The Review was far and away the hardest thing I’ve had to do in college. Even harder than my Honors Thesis,” he said. The challenges of having to keep tabs on 30 different people, to map out an organizational game plan, to encourage college students to perform as professionals, and to balance the interests of various parties helped him develop as a leader. “It matured me as a practical person.”

So what was it that inspired Mr. Kosicki to pursue the Fulbright and this particular line of research in the first place? First of all, Mr. Kosicki is a second-generation Polish-American who learned to speak Polish at the same time he learned to speak English. Having visited grandparents in Poland during the summer for many years, he had deep family connections and a significant background in Polish history. However, his roots were not the only impetus behind his desire to pursue research in Poland .

While September 11, 2001 had an impact on every American, it had a profound impact on the life of Mr. Kosicki. About to pack his things to start his freshman year at Stanford, Mr. Kosicki was returning from a visit with his grandparents in Poland on the morning that the attacks occurred. His flight made an emergency landing in St. John’s , Newfoundland , where Mr. Kosicki spent two days along with 4000 other 9/11 refugees before making the trip to Washington , DC by bus along with 77 other passengers from his flight. The emotional bonds that sprang up spontaneously between people who sat next to each other for hours without talking really struck Mr. Kosicki: to this day, he feels strongly tied to the people he met on the plane and along the way. Mr. Kosicki’s expe­rience of 9/11 forced him to rethink fundamental questions: how to relate to other people, how to recover from tragedy, how to apply academic knowledge to tough practical situations. He began to define a life purpose for himself – to learn and to teach – a purpose that he has tried to pursue throughout his time at Stanford.

In sophomore year of college, Mr. Kosicki, raised in a non-practicing Catholic home, decided to become a confirmed Catholic. After his confirmation, he became interested in the connections between European history and Christianity, which soon developed more specifically into research into Christianity’s role in “inspiring” the European Union.

How did this personal interest translate into an academic focus? For Mr. Kosicki, it started with a President’s Scholar grant, which he used to interview 13 major Polish figures bridging Catholicism and European politics, from former Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka to the Polish Episcopate’s former secretary-general, Tadeusz Pieronek. What had begun as an academic flirtation turned into the point of departure for all of the research he has undertaken in college. Mr. Kosicki proceeded to publish his findings as “ Poland ’s Uncertain Future: Politicized Religion and European Integration,” in the Summer/Fall 2003 issue of the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs.

After returning to Stanford, Mr. Kosicki decided to focus his Senior Honors thesis on changes in Catholic theology in the 1930s and 1940s that gave rise to the political parties that initiated European integration. “Christian ideas translated into political and economic policy through Christian Democratic politicians,” he says. Of particular interest is the main author of the Christian Democrat ideas, Jacques Maritain of France .

However, Poland from 1947 to 1956 was practically shut off from Western European ideas under Stalinist influence. Not until Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization campaign and the com­promise in 1956 after Polish unrest did Western ideas start to permeate Polish Catholic intellectual circles. Mr. Kosicki wondered whether there was an analogue in Poland for the Western European Christian Democrats, a category of politicians “who tended to associate public policy with religious faith and believed in the Christian inspiration of their European project.”

Mr. Kosicki believes these ideas in Poland were nurtured between 1956 and 1968. Mr. Kosicki has planned interviews with Poland’s first non-Communist Prime Minister since the 1940s, Tadeusz Mazowiecki – who professes Christian inspiration even in the absence of a formal Christian Democratic party in Poland – as well as living editors of Poland’s major Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny, which in the years of Communist rule was one of the most consistently vocal sources of opposition to the regime’s repressive policies.

Under the auspices of the Fulbright, Mr. Kosicki plans to conduct regular conversations with these figures, pur­sue archival research, and base himself at the University of Warsaw . He has even been asked by his sponsor, Prof. Jan Malicki, to teach a class at the university next year, even though he will have only a Bachelor’s degree. After returning from a year abroad, Piotr will pursue a Ph.D. in the History Department at Princeton University .

The Fulbright Program was established in 1946 under the sponsorship of Senator J. William Fulbright from Arkansas . In the history of the program, there have been over 250,000 participants, approximately 38% of which have been from the United States . The Institute for International Education’s Fulbright Program for U.S. Students, which is sponsored by the State Department, awards over 1100 grants each year in all fields of study and in over 140 countries.

U.S. student applicants go through a three-stage screening process. First, applicants are interviewed on campus, where they receive scores that are passed on to the next level, where applicants are screened on a national basis. If fortunate enough to pass the national screening process, the candidate’s application is passed on to a selection committee in the country for which that candidate has applied, after which the final decision is made. The State Department has veto power over applicants, and each choice is reviewed by a Presidential Commission.

According to Katie Route , Manager of the Overseas Resource Center at Stanford’s Bechtel International Center , 18 of the 65 Stanford student applicants in the 2003-04 academic year received Fulbright Scholarships. However, due to the variation in response time for each country to which stu­dents have applied, the final results for this year’s class of Stanford Fulbright applicants have not yet been received.