It is often said that, in order to grow, we must step out of our comfort zones. For some, that could mean entering a new social environment or trying out a new type of cuisine. For others, it means something a little weightier, like uprooting your entire life and moving to Taiwan on one month’s notice.

This will be the case for Maia Arbel, CLA ‘24. A global studies major and political science minor, Arbel has been selected to receive a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) Award. She will join approximately 150 fellow Fulbrighters assisting in classrooms in Taiwan. Since its inception in 1946, the Fulbright Program has offered over 400,000 students and educators the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research overseas. The ETA Program specifically aims to strengthen educational and cultural relationships between the US and various host countries. 

She calls it the “biggest achievement of [her] life,” but there was one small caveat: After being waitlisted for several months, Arbel did not learn that she had been selected until June 24. She only had 48 hours to accept or decline the award, which would require her to leave on August 1 to spend a year in Taiwan. 

“I have a lease and a full-time job. I’m very much planted in Philly,” says Arbel. “But I think now is the perfect time—I’m starting to get comfortable, so why not throw it all away and start over somewhere else?”

“Why not?” has been something of a recurring mantra in Arbel’s story. Her willingness to welcome new challenges and not shy from discomfort, combined with an insatiable global curiosity, has steered her through an eventful and successful academic career. 

For instance, when she was in high school, Arbel was accidentally placed in a Chinese class. After some consideration, she decided not to correct the issue. “I thought, ‘You know what? I like a challenge; let’s stick with it,’” she recalls. That decision wound up proving foundational for Arbel. She kept studying the language through high school and visited Taiwan for the first time on a class trip.

When she came to Temple, Arbel continued to build on those foundations, further developing her fluency and earning a Certificate in Chinese. In her junior year, she studied abroad at National Taiwan University, widely recognized as the most prestigious university in Taiwan. A little older and wiser than on her first trip to Taiwan, Arbel was better able to soak in the experience over her six-month stay.

“I don’t leave Philly often. I don’t even have a car; I just take SEPTA,” she laughs. “So it was really cool to be out there, outside of a city environment. It was so lovely and so different. I just thought, ‘I need to come back here, this is like my second home.’”

She recounted her experience in detail in a blog post for Temple’s Education Abroad page. There, she writes: “I made amazing friends that I still talk to. I explored the whole island with them, from the most northern point to the most southern…I would not be who I am today without having gone to Taiwan.”

Touting herself as a “Philly girl, born and raised,” Arbel credits her appetite for engaging with other cultures and languages (she also studied Arabic and Japanese at Temple) to her upbringing and schooling in the city. “At my high school, it seemed like everyone was the child or grandchild of immigrants, including myself—my dad’s an immigrant—and people were very proud of their culture,” she says. “I think I learned more from the diversity of the people around me than I did in classrooms. I always found it so interesting; it was a big curiosity of mine.”

For Maia, the global studies major (specifically, the global cultures track) was an opportunity to explore that curiosity. “I saw you would have to take two classes about Africa, two classes about the Middle East, two classes about East Asia, and so on, and I thought that was really cool” she says. “I had anthropology classes, political science classes…some people are scared by [the breadth of the major], but I found it very appealing that I would learn about different disciplines.”

After taking Comparative Politics: Developing Nations with Roselyn Hsueh, a Professor of Political Science, Arbel took a deeper interest in Taiwan’s political history. Recognizing her enthusiasm, Hsueh hired her as a research assistant for the 2024 spring semester.

“Maia’s curiosity and critical engagement of lectures, course materials and classroom discussions stood out among her peers when she took my class. When she inquired about research opportunities, I gladly invited Maia to join my research team,” says Hsueh. “As my undergraduate RA, Maia took initiative and provided excellent research, including using Mandarin sources. With her Fulbright to Taiwan, Maia will join Fulbrighters around the world to benefit from and contribute to global peace and cultural understanding.” 

As a sophomore in 2022, Arbel was invited to speak on a panel as part of Temple’s 9th Annual Disability Symposium. There, she shared some of the challenges she had faced over the years as an autistic student, largely due to a lack of awareness surrounding her disability. 

“It was the first time I spoke publicly about my autism, and it opened a lot of doors for me about not being afraid of my autism as someone who was diagnosed in the 3rd or 4th grade—before this current wave of understanding and acceptance,” Arbel explains. “There’s been a huge change over the last two decades about how people interact with autistic people, especially autistic women.” 

When it came time to apply for the Fulbright, one of the essay prompts asked how she would approach teaching her native language. Arbel wrote about the advantages that her perspective as an autistic person could give her as an educator.

“I’m a native English speaker, but a lot of the subtleties that other people pick up naturally, I kind of had to teach myself growing up,” says Arbel. “So I might be able to break down things like particular nuances and contexts more easily than a non-autistic person because, even as a native English speaker, I had to study those things myself.”

The upcoming year in Taiwan will be Arbel’s first experience teaching—just another unknown for her to embrace. She hopes to teach global politics in some capacity in the future. “I love talking, I love learning,” she says.

Wherever life takes her after the Fulbright, one can assume it will be somewhere just beyond her comfort zone. Why not?