Former COD Student Alexis Reisch Receives Fulbright Award for Research in Sweden

Former College of DuPage student Alexis Reisch has received a Fulbright U.S. Student Program grant to study neuroscience in Sweden.

Recipients of Fulbright awards are selected on the basis of academic and professional achievement as well as record of service and demonstrated leadership in their respective fields. Reisch, originally from Lagrange Highlands, graduated this spring from the Honors College at the University of Illinois at Chicago with a bachelor's degree in Neuroscience and will leave in September for Linköping University in Sweden.

"My project, 'Exposure to Early Life Trauma as a Risk Factor for Impaired Emotion Regulation,' will examine how childhood abuse affects emotional regulation in adulthood," she said. "It is similar to the research I have done at UIC examining how reported childhood trauma scores relate to brain activation differences and biases in categorizing emotions in facial expressions."

Reisch discovered the Fulbright application through UIC's Office of Special Scholarships. She then attended an information panel/Q&A with former Fulbright winners from UIC who spoke about their experiences.

"I realized that obtaining a Fulbright grant was perhaps more within my reach than I previously thought," she said. "Receiving the Fulbright is something that showcased and validated all of my previous hard work, and it is something that will be a huge accomplishment. I am hopeful it will set me apart from other students by demonstrating how serious and invested I am in my research and my goals."

Hard work isn't new to Reisch. At College of DuPage, she was a Presidential Scholar, an honor for high-achieving students that included a full-tuition scholarship and enrollment in the Honors program and the Phi Theta Kappa Honors Society. She earned both Associate in Arts and Associate in Science degrees while maintaining a perfect GPA and was named one of the College's Outstanding Graduates in 2013.

"College of DuPage helped me find my own voice," she said. "The faculty and staff really opened my eyes, and I learned how to explore what I wanted to do."

Reisch is one of more than 1,900 U.S. citizens who will teach, conduct research and provide expertise abroad during the 2016-2017 school year through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. She hopes the Fulbright experience will help clarify her future career plans.

"I'm realizing how extensively broad of a major neuroscience is and how there are so many directions that it can take," she said. "For a career, I definitely want to conduct research and am interested in researching emotional trauma in its various forms and effects. One of the advantages of the Fulbright is that it's helping me decide my future, because I get to spend 10 months doing what I could hypothetically be doing as a career for the rest of my life."