For the third straight year, students from the University of Michigan have received more Fulbright grants than those from any other public university in the United States.

Fulbrights were also awarded to five faculty members from U-M’s Ann Arbor campus, putting the university No. 6 on the list of top-producing institutions in the U.S. One faculty member from UM-Dearborn also received a grant.

The grants—one of the U.S. government’s most prestigious awards—were provided to 29 students at U-M to study, conduct research or teach English overseas for six to 12 months in 2015-16. Recipients were chosen for their academic merit and leadership potential.

The students’ interests range from studying migrants in Mexico and researching urban flooding in Indonesia to investigating how preparations for the Olympics affected low-income communities in Brazil.

“The students at U-M display a public ethos that is an example to all of us,” said James Holloway, vice provost for global and engaged education. “As a group, they seek constantly to engage the world and make a positive difference to the international community.

“Our strong representation in the Fulbright competition is a reflection of this global perspective, supported on a foundation of strong academic preparation.”

The only U.S. institution that received more Fulbrights for students this academic year was Harvard University, which had 31.

Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, the Fulbright program seeks to increase mutual understanding between the U.S. and other countries as well as help the recipients achieve their academic goals. More than 1,900 U.S. students, artists and young professionals from 100 different fields are offered Fulbrights each year.

U-M was also ranked No. 5 in the nation for the most students studying overseas by the 2015 Open Doors Report.

The University of Michigan celebrated the success of its biggest partnership in China as it began a new collaboration in the country—a top destination for researchers and students.

The 10th anniversary of the U-M-Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) Joint Institute was marked with festivities in China on April 10, 2016. The award-winning partnership has become a model for joint ventures in education in the Asian nation with the world’s second-biggest economy.

Each year, more than 1,000 Chinese undergraduates study mechanical or electrical and computer engineering at the institute in Shanghai. For U-M students, the institute has become a popular place for education-abroad opportunities.

“U-M is proud to be part of this long-running, fruitful and growing partnership with SJTU,” said James Holloway, vice provost for global and engaged education at U-M. “Together, we have created unique educational platforms and undertaken important joint research projects whose results will benefit all. We have good friendships with many colleagues here in Shanghai, and are proud to celebrate this anniversary with them.”

Two days after the celebration in Shanghai, U-M signed an agreement in Beijing to establish the Tsinghua-Michigan Society of Fellows. This partnership promotes scholarship and academic exchanges in the humanities and humanistic social sciences.

Each year, the program at Tsinghua University, one of China’s leading institutions of higher education, will offer three three-year fellowships for recent Ph.D.s in the humanities or humanistic social sciences.

In Nov. 2015, investor and alumnus John Wu and his wife, Jane Sun, donated $10 million to the University of Michigan-Shanghai Jiao Tong University Joint Institute to establish the John Wu and Jane Sun Endowment Fund, which will support professorships, faculty awards, scholarships, student entrepreneurship funds and other programs.

Meredith Starkman, the 2016 recipient of the Wallenberg Fellowship, plans on using the arts as tools for improving people’s lives and promoting social justice in India. The award is given each spring to a graduating senior with exceptional promise and accomplishment who is committed to service and the public good.

The fellowship provides graduating seniors with $25,000 to carry out an independent project of learning or exploration anywhere in the world during the year after graduation. Starkman plans to go to India to work with groups that use music, dance, theatre and the visual arts to improve the lives of people living along the margins of society.

A theatre performance major, Starkman initially became intrigued with this idea while taking a class called “Theatre and Incarceration” that offered theater workshops once a week at the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility, the only women’s prison in the state. “It was totally life changing,” she said. “It really taught me that theater isn’t one thing, and it isn’t supposed to be done in one way and that you can ask questions in a purposeful way—in a way I’d say answers them without answering them.”

After the course ended, she joined a small group of students who traveled to Rio de Janeiro to study how art can impact oppressive systems of power. The group also participated in workshops in prisons and slums in a program funded by U-M’s Brazil Initiative.

The Wallenberg Fellowship honors one of U-M’s most illustrious graduates: Raoul Wallenberg, who graduated with a degree in architecture in 1935. As a Swedish diplomat during World War II, he saved the lives of tens of thousands of Jews in Hungary, using safe houses and creating special passports for them.

“The way he approached helping people was so powerful and effective, because he didn’t do it for himself,” Starkman said. “I think it was always with other people in mind and always coming from a place of listening and then from a place of giving. I am humbled that the fellowship I have received is in his name.”

It took more than two years for a group of University of Michigan surgeons to establish a transplant center in Ethiopia, and their work culminated in a historic event. Dr. Jeffrey Punch led his team to the successful completion of three kidney transplants from living donors between Sept. 22 and 24, 2015. The surgeries were performed with assistance from four Ethiopian fellowship surgeons at St. Paul’s Hospital Millennium Medical College in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

“The team is so proud to be a part of this historic milestone for the country,” said Punch, a professor of surgery at the U-M Medical School. “The real winners are the patients with kidney disease who up until now have had no treatment option other than very expensive dialysis that some just can’t afford.”

The collaboration between U-M and St. Paul’s started through the initiative of Dr. Senait Fisseha, an adjunct professor in U-M’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Fisseha was born in Ethiopia and first took Punch to his country to support the surgery residency training program. She also introduced Punch to Ethiopia’s minister of health, who asked the two U-M doctors to help Ethiopia start a kidney transplant program.

“The real winners are the patients with kidney disease who up until now have had no treatment option other than very expensive dialysis that some just can’t afford.”

– Jeffrey Punch, U-M professor of surgery

The Transplant Center facility at St. Paul’s is “an enviable model for how to deliver transplant care,” Punch said, and it includes dedicated donor and recipient operating rooms that are adjacent to each other to facilitate transfer of the donor kidney.

“Everyone here is ecstatic. The feeling reminds me of when I was a medical student and watched U-M’s doctors do the first liver transplant at U-M in 1985,” he said. U-M Hospital was the first medical facility in Michigan to complete an organ transplant during a procedure in 1964.

The University of Michigan moved up two spots to No. 6 on the list of colleges and universities that produce the most Peace Corps volunteers.

U-M, which made the list for the 16th consecutive year, is the fourth all-time producer of Peace Corps volunteers, with 2,640 alumni having served since the agency was created in 1961. Currently, 48 U-M alumni are in the field, including Alexandra Soos from Berrien Springs, Michigan. She has been teaching 9th-grade chemistry in Mozambique since September 2015.

“Every day I feel like I’m learning more about myself, and every day I am trying to be the best person I can be,” said Soos, who graduated last year. “It’s hard to give back even half of what I’m learning from this experience, but I’m trying to help inside and outside of the classroom.”

U-M was also No. 2 on the Peace Corps’ list of the top producing graduate schools. James Holloway, vice provost for global and engaged education, said that one of his students in nuclear engineering joined the Peace Corps and has been teaching science in a village in Malawi for more than a year now. “This incredibly smart woman could have done anything,” he said. “She chose to serve others.”

Holloway added that as a public institution with a global reach, U-M has a longstanding service-minded ethos.

“Our students come to U-M to learn how to think about the world and to learn the skills needed to create a positive impact in communities near and far,” he said. “The Peace Corps mission resonates strongly within our walls, and our students respond and join in this important service to the world.”