By Logan Jackson

Published on March 26, 2024

Two University of Missouri students – juniors Jordan Chiantelli-Mosebach and Tanner Smith – recently secured Fulbright Canada-Mitacs Globalink Research Internships, offered through the Foundation for Educational Exchange between Canada and the United States (Fulbright Canada).

The internship is designed for students from the U.S. who are interested in traveling to Canada to participate in advanced research projects in their interest areas. Students spend 10 to 12 weeks in the summer on an established research project, supervised by a professor. There are also ample opportunities for professional trainings, and scholars are able to participate in cultural, social and recreational experiences.

Unusual among research awards, students from all majors are encouraged to apply.

Chiantelli-Mosebach is a linguistics and statistics double major, who is also minoring in mathematics. Smith is a double major as well, working toward degrees in communication and political science. He is a sociology minor, too. Both scholars are pursuing the Honors Certificate at Mizzou and have been part of the ASH Scholars Program.

“I love the Mitacs Globalink application because it forces Mizzou students to look at their research interests in a new light, from a different cultural perspective,” said Erik Potter, program manager for the MU Office of Global and National Fellowships. “Jordan and Tanner are strong scholars, and they both did a great job of thinking about how pursuing their research in Canada could open up new, interesting questions for them to explore.”

Entering a New Field of Study

“I was at a friend’s holiday get-together, and we all stopped what we were doing when I saw the email titled ‘Internship Offer’ come in. It was very exciting to get the news.”

Chiantelli-Mosebach’s internship opportunity will allow him to build on the stellar undergraduate research experiences he has already had as a Tiger. Through the ASH Scholars Program, Chiantelli-Mosebach has spent two years studying the Bantu languages of sub-Saharan Africa as part of the Collaborative Research in African Languages (CORAL) team. His role has been focused on historical linguistics, overseen by one of the faculty team leads, Rebecca Grollemund, an assistant professor of linguistics at MU. Chiantelli-Mosebach spent this past summer at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, where he completed a statistics-focused internship through the Naval Research Enterprise Internship Program.

With his Fulbright Canada award, Chiantelli-Mosebach will be working with Tim Bressmann, an associate professor in the Department of Speech-Language Pathology at the University of Toronto. It will offer Chiantelli-Mosebach a chance to conduct research in a new field of study.

“These opportunities are incredibly important,” Chiantelli-Mosebach said. “While speech-language pathology is closely related to linguistics, I haven’t had the chance to do any work in that specific field so far. Although this internship is somewhat outside of my field, the basic knowledge and skills still apply. This was purposeful because as much as I love the work I do right now in historical linguistics, I’m still not sure which subfield of linguistics I would like to end up in long term. Having this under my belt will give me some experience in a more applied area of study, so that by the time I start looking into applying for graduate school next year, I will have a better sense of what I may want to go into.”

This will be the first chance Chiantelli-Mosebach has had to study abroad, too.

“It’s super exciting to be doing the work in Canada,” Chiantelli-Mosebach said. “I’ve always wanted to do some form of study abroad, but it just hasn’t been feasible up until now.”

Continuing Communication Research

“Once I actually got the news that I had received the internship, I spent a couple minutes in disbelief and then got to work making phone calls and sending emails to thank all the people who helped me through this process and made this a reality.”

Smith has been part of the ASH Scholars Program for three years, working on the Minority Focused News as a Locus of Empowerment team. That research team – led by Chris Josey, an associate teaching professor of communication, and Julius Riles, an associate professor of communication – investigates the manners in which news websites and streaming platforms that serve under-represented and marginalized populations provide a benefit to society. 

Smith has also been part of two other communication-related research projects at Mizzou, one looking at the effect of intergenerational family storytelling on how Polish individuals are making sense of the war in Ukraine and the other looking at events that are most likely to cause media coverage of colon cancer and colon cancer screenings.

Through the Fulbright Canada internship, Smith will continue to conduct research in a communication-related field. He will be working on a unique project with Natalie Riediger, an associate professor in the Department of Food and Human Nutritional Sciences at the University of Manitoba.

“We will be looking at the media presence of ‘Cannamoms’ – who early findings seem to indicate are similar to so-called ‘wine moms’ but in regard to cannabis,” Smith said. “We’re wanting to see what we can learn from social media and blog posts about these ‘Cannamoms.’”

Like Chiantelli-Mosebach, this will be Smith’s first study abroad experience.

“An opportunity like this is absolutely amazing for my growth as a student, individual and professional,” Smith said. “While in the short term, this project will allow me to become immersed in a new culture and gain experience doing research under a new setting. This will also pay huge dividends for me in the future. As someone who wants to get my Ph.D. in communication and become a professor, this will give me not only the tools I need to be prepared for graduate school, but the experience going abroad will potentially open the door for future travel.”