John Rangel Marte receives Gilman Scholarship to study in Spain and Belgium

Business administration major John Rangel Marte recently received a Gilman Scholarship to support his study abroad in Barcelona, Spain. He was also selected for a special program in which 25 students traveled to Brussels, Belgium, to visit the European Union headquarters.

Born in Puerto Rico, Marte moved to Newport when he was 4. He enjoyed the small-town atmosphere on Aquidneck Island and wanted to continue that into his college education. With small class sizes and a tight-knit community, Marte knew Salve Regina was the school for him.

Marte was ready to break out of his comfort zone, and he wanted to try new experiences during his time at Salve Regina. The Center for Global Education and Fellowships guided him in applying for the Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship, a grant program run by the U.S. Department of State that enables students of limited financial means to study or intern abroad.

Gilman Scholarship recipients gain skills that are critical to national security and economic competitiveness. Only a few thousand students are selected annually.

“Barcelona is a bigger city than Newport, so it was an opportunity to go and do something completely different,” Marte said. “I speak Spanish, so studying in Barcelona would let me interact with the locals and the culture there, also.”

At the European Union headquarters in Brussels, Marte spent a week learning about EU relations, an experience unlike any other. “We got to tour EU buildings and watch people work together to create policy,” he said. “A lot of the policies that the EU implements trickle over to the U.S., and I didn’t know that before.”

Bringing his experiences back to Newport

Before his journey to Spain, Salve Regina had introduced Marte to FabNewport, a local nonprofit whose mission is to ensure that children have fair and equal access to opportunities, resources and relationships to help build them a better future.

“It was actually for a Spanish class at Salve where I first got connected to FabNewport,” he said. “I was able to choose a community partner I wanted to work with and decided to teach lessons for an after-school program in Spanish at FabNewport.”

From personal experience, Marte understands how important these nonprofits are. He recalls spending a lot of his childhood in the Martin Luther King Center, a nonprofit community center based in Newport. His time there gave him the mindset to achieve his goals, which eventually led him to Spain.

“I hadn’t heard of or seen people that look like me or come from similar backgrounds like me being able to study abroad,” Marte said. “But now I’ve learned not to limit myself.”

Studying in Barcelona is something Marte would have never imagined to be feasible. He is grateful to Salve Regina for giving him the opportunity to travel abroad and can’t wait to pay his experiences forward to children that are just like him.

“Going back and being able to show these kids from the same community, who come from similar circumstances what is possible, is going to be really great,” he said. “I want to show them there’s more out there than what they might think.”

Article written by student writer Catherine Dolan ’23