Fulbright Scholar Anna Maria DiBrita Shares Her NJIT STEM Knowledge with Spain's Future
Anna Maria DiBrita ’24 didn’t quite have the time to study abroad during her time pursuing her degree in biomedical engineering. The Albert Dorman Honors Scholar kept a full plate on campus — member of the Society of Female Engineers, ambassadorships for biomedical engineering and the Honors College, Orientation Fellow among others. But now, DiBrita has earned a Fulbright scholarship and is an English teaching assistant in Spain’s Canary Islands.
Her mornings begin with a bus ride to her school in Telde. DiBrita assists and supports the students learning English. She’s there Mondays through Thursdays. On Fridays, she’s involved in her community by volunteering in a clinic for multiple sclerosis.
“There, I get to hang out with people who are amazing, and I get to learn their stories,” she said. “And these are people that have multiple sclerosis, and I help out with physical therapy. I'm not a physical therapist, but my backing in biomedical engineering has allowed me to take on more of a physical role with the patients.”
At the clinic, she engages in conversation with them, helps them with their English and teaches them a little bit about where she comes from.
Growing up in New Jersey, she worked at restaurants to save money. DiBrita, who also has family from Latin America, began to learn conversational Spanish by talking with her coworkers. On top of her volunteer work and teaching, DiBrita is also taking Spanish classes and hopes to be fluent by the end of the academic year.
Recently, DiBrita planned a hiking trip to Spain’s tallest mountain, Mount Teide in Tenerife. The peak is 12,188 feet. When she told her Spanish colleagues she was planning the trip, DiBrita was overwhelmed by their generosity.
“I came to school on Tuesday and started to tell some of my colleagues that I was going to hike Mount Teide in Tenerife on Friday. Right away, they started asking, ‘Do you have a jacket? Do you have gloves?’” she explained. “When I was preparing for my Fulbright in Gran Canaria, I thought it was going to be summer all year around, so I didn't pack anything suitable for the hike. I had tank tops, shorts and flip flops. When my coworkers asked me these questions, I responded, 'No, why? Do I need them?' To which they said back, 'Yeah, yeah, you should probably have hiking boots. You should probably have this, that.'"
The following days her colleagues provided her with all the equipment necessary. Looking back, DiBrita believes all the gear she used for the hike was borrowed.
“I think one of the most shocking things, and one of the most different things about Spain's culture versus what I've known my whole life in the United States, is the generosity and hospitality that was extended to me once I came here,” she noted. “And not to say the United States is not a place where there are no generous people, but I've just never been so welcomed into a community and given so much.”
DiBrita has enjoyed teaching her students about American holidays like Thanksgiving and Halloween, but she hopes to organize a Science Fair before the end of the academic year. Throughout the course of the year, she intends to have STEM speakers, among them former classmates and professors from NJIT.
I've just never been so welcomed into a community and given so much.
“I would love to stay after school and start organizing a Science Fair with the students, and even if I am able to reach a small population of them, I would like to give presentations to all of my classes and create Science Fair-related projects for us to work on together, such as making baking powder volcanoes or designing a water filtration system,” she said. “Something along the lines of that, where I can extend a little bit of my STEM background to my students and have fun in the process.
“I’ll also use this as a means to introduce or integrate more science into their education with the ultimate goal being to have an event at the end of the year where the parents can come by and see what their children have been working on.”
DiBrita wants her students to be familiar with chemistry or biology, even the basic foundations, so when they go to university, she wants them to at least have an idea or have grown up knowing about those things.
As she continues to grow in Spain as a Fulbright scholar, DiBrita looks back at her time at NJIT as instrumental in developing her leadership skills. She highlights the school’s diversity as one of her favorite memories from her time as a college student and also how the school’s faculty and staff always offered a helping hand.
“It was special to feel like I was important, to feel like there were actually people interested in what was happening in my daily life, on my day to day. It was such a refreshing kind of change of scenery. For the first time in my life, I felt like I really had support, and it made me want to give back more,” said DiBrita.
“So coming to Spain, I think NJIT really helped me or taught me some tools to be able to extend a hand to others with my time here, and specifically with my students, to make them feel like they have a space in my heart, or they have a space in my mind,” she added. “For example, following up with them. They tell me something on Friday, I asked them on Monday how it's going and things like that. And you learn the things that will leave an impression on students, and I think that I can do that for them because NJIT has done that for me.”
