Grover earns Frisbey International Student Award

Using an Erickson Discovery Grant, Nakul Grover traveled to Bangladesh to research Muslim refugees displaced by turmoil in Myanmar. 

His work, which began in 2018, led to a book on the plight of the Rohingya people living in camps that he calls “the most severe form of ethnic cleansing” seen since the Holocaust. The book is titled “The Goddess of Peacocks.”

It earned Grover, now a senior dual majoring in chemical engineering and English in the integrated BA + MA program, the 2020 Ardeth and Norman Frisbey International Student Award for undergraduates. 

The award recognizes undergraduate students who have contributed significantly to furthering international understanding. The student’s contributions could consist of academic, athletic or extracurricular campus activity and/or community involvement in school or civic group programs or service projects.

A nominator said Grover’s book is the definitive refugee story that includes key players from India, Myanmar and the United States. 

“Grover constructed a brilliant collection of short stories, each of which takes up a different character’s narrative thread,” a nominator said. “He developed this thesis further — by more than a hundred pages — for his master’s thesis. He struck at the heart of characters, giving each a role to play: the exploiter, the ignorer, and the one who is desperate, the one defeated. How better to understand the crisis of a people than to delve into their most intimate aspirations?”

The thesis earned Grover the Center of Global Studies Thesis Prize.

Grover was also nominated for his three-year commitment to the Presidential Leadership Academy, which is designed to give undergraduate students the leadership fundamentals needed to thrive in an environment in which multiple dimensions of an issue are explored, diverse viewpoints are welcomed and heard and a fully informed and respectful discourse ensues that leads to sound action. 

In addition to serving on the Presidential Leadership Academy, Grover is a Schreyer Scholar and Paterno Fellow.