Kumar Wins Fulbright Award
Northwestern University’s Anusha Kumar, an honors student at the School of Education and Social Policy who studied social policy, received a U.S. Student Fulbright Award to teach English in Linz, Austria.
Kumar, fluent in English, German and Tamil, decided to apply for the Fulbright teaching program after working as a tutor for the Books & Breakfast program, which offers Evanston students a nutritious breakfast and homework assistance.
One of the students, a Spanish-speaking kindergartener she worked with, was hesitant to use English. So Kumar made flashcards related to something he loved —soccer—with the English word on one side and a photo of the term on the other.
The two practiced the words by bookmarking and underlining the term when it appeared in a book or homework. Soon he was using words like ‘ball’, ‘goal’, and ‘dribble’ and speaking full English sentences about the soccer games he’d watch on weekends.
The student taught her that "creating a supportive and accessible learning environment is a pathway to building language skills quickly,” she wrote in her application. “My time as a Books & Breakfast tutor for the past three years showed what it means to play a role in the educational journey of students.”
In addition to working locally, Kumar pursued projects abroad. Supported by an International Senior Thesis Research Grant from the Buffett Institute for Global Affairs and an Academic Year Undergraduate Research Grant, Kumar traveled to Chennai to examine how community-led mutual aid networks help people access food and build resilience in the city. In addition to navigating the complicated logistics involved with an international research project, Kumar translated some of her interviews from Tamil into English, a time intensive endeavor.
“I was just really curious to see how communities are organizing to address the fact that climate change is increasingly threatening urban communities here, as well as the lack of food security,” said Kumar, who spent time in Chennai while growing up.
Her thesis, “From Scarcity to Solidarity: Mutual Aid as a Pathway to Food Justice and Urban Resilience in Chennai, India" won the top overall poster award and first place in the social justice division at the Chicago Area Undergraduate Research Symposium.
At Northwestern, Kumar served a three-year term on the City of Evanston's Environment Board and was a fellow with the Center for Civic Engagement and with Matriculate — where she mentored three high-achieving, low-income, first-generation high school students through the college enrollment process. She also won the Friedman-Kline Foundation Fellowship, which took her to an organic farm in Germany through the Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms program.
A Newman Civic Fellow, she was named Northwestern Student Employee of the Year for Community Service in 2025 and participated in the Asian Americans Advancing Justice Youth Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C. in 2024.