Communication Professor Receives Fulbright International Education Administrators Award

With five study abroad programs to choose from, Bellevue College is one step closer to adding one more to the list of countries students can travel to. 

This is thanks to a Fulbright International Education Administrators (IEA) award that Bellevue College communication professor and study abroad coordinator Dr. Li Liu recently received. The award, which is part of the Fulbright Scholar Program, will take her to Taiwan this month. The award funds the two-week-long group seminar in Taiwan for Liu and 15 other administrators from colleges and universities in the United States. Bellevue College is represented in this year’s awardee roster with faculty and administrators from Vanderbilt University, Emory University, Pennsylvania State University, and Rice University, to name a few. They will visit higher education institutions across the cities of Taipei, Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Yilan, and Hsinchu. 

Since 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided over 400,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists, and professionals with the opportunity to study, teach, and conduct research abroad. Fulbrighters exchange ideas, build people-to-people connections, and work to address complex global challenges. 

As a member of this year’s Fulbright IEA cohort, Liu will visit the top higher education institutions in Taiwan. This includes an opportunity to visit National Taiwan University, the research flagship institution in Taiwan, as well as Tainan University of Arts, with established expertise in documentary filmmaking, sound art, and visual art. In Hsinchu, the cohort will participate in a Semiconductor Forum jointly hosted by Minghsin University of Science and Technology, National Tsing Hua University, and National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University. In Taichung, the cohort will visit China Medical University, with a highlight of learning more about their interactive medical program. 

Liu anticipates a productive visit to Taiwan that will lead to more collaborations with universities in Taiwan. Besides teaching, Liu also represents Bellevue College at the Washington Community College Consortium for Study Abroad (WCCCSA) and serves as chair of the organization for the 2025-26 academic year. 

Founded in the mid-1990s, the college consortium collectively manages study abroad programs for students attending its 20-member community colleges within the state of Washington. Bellevue College is one of the founding colleges. 

Through the membership benefit, the college has, to date, offered study abroad opportunities in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Italy, France, Spain, Chile, Costa Rica, German and the United Kingdom. Liu said part of her motivation to apply for the IEA program was because of WCCCSA’s interest in starting a study abroad program with a university in Taiwan. Liu hopes to build connections from her visit that could turn into a collaboration with Bellevue College. 

Liu said that one version of such collaboration beyond the IEA program could be a very interesting, long-term project — making a typically expensive global learning experience more accessible to community college students. One way to do this is to replicate a successful collaboration she had with a university in China. This would entail sending Bellevue College instructors to visit a school in Taiwan, where they would work with instructors abroad, and together, they would design course materials. 

“This way, students don’t need to actually travel to Taiwan, per se,” Liu said. “But then their learning experience will be more authentic, because there’s at least one person in the classroom who actually has been there.” 

She said that an in-person study abroad program to Taiwan is also possible, just not immediately, as it usually takes up to two years to create a program for the first group to travel abroad. 

For Liu, the opportunity to study abroad can be a transformative experience, especially for students at Bellevue College, who often work or have plans to transfer to another institution. She said a study abroad program could be an opportunity for students to rediscover themselves in new social and cultural environments. Regardless of what students believe they already know about a destination country, when they arrive there, Liu said, they have to reestablish their life entirely from scratch. And this is in addition to the academic portion of the program. 

Besides the challenges from cultural adjustment and selfcare abroad, “our programs are with a relative level of academic rigor, so the program is asking a lot from them in order to be successful. So it is transformative in that regard as well,” she said, adding that for those looking to transfer to a four-year school, participating in a study abroad program while working toward their associate degree can also help set a student’s transfer application apart. 

And when it comes to travel in general, Liu said it’s a very effective way to step outside of your echo chamber. Visiting a country is different from watching an influencer on social media or watching news coverage, as both of these formats speak about a place in very distinct ways. Visiting a country, interacting with authentic members from the local community, she said, helps people realize how much is not being said or reflected in the usual way they access information.  

“By traveling to the location, you can provide your first-person account,” she said.” And I think that is essential, and I would admit that it’s a privilege as well. So, that’s why I feel working and providing this study abroad experience to the community is quite a significant privilege.”