June 6, 2002

Contact: Hodgie Bricke, International Programs, (785) 864-6161.

9 KU faculty win Fulbright grants

LAWRENCE -- Nine University of Kansas faculty members have received Fulbright grants for research or teaching abroad for the 2002-03 academic year. This is the largest number of faculty to receive Fulbright grants in one year at KU in more than 20 years.

KU Chancellor Robert Hemenway said, "Faculty who conduct research and teach abroad bring the world into our classrooms. That benefits our students and helps prepare them to function in a global economy. Earning nine Fulbright awards in one year is an impressive achievement that reflects well on the whole university."

More than 245 KU faculty have received Fulbright grants since the program began more than 50 years ago. One of the oldest and largest international exchange programs in the world, the Fulbright Scholar Program offers grants for college and university faculty and administrators to lecture and conduct research in 140 countries.

The Council for International Exchange of Scholars, on behalf of the U.S. Department of State, administers the Fulbright Scholar Program. The Office of International Programs coordinates the Fulbright Scholar Program at KU.

KU faculty receiving Fulbright grants for 2002-03 and their research and teaching plans are:

Nobelza Asuncion-Lande, professor of communication studies, will teach at the St. Petersburg State University of Business and Economics in Russia for the 2002-03 academic year. Asuncion-Lande also has received Fulbright grants to England and to Singapore. In St. Petersburg, she will help Anna Nabirokhina, deputy director of the Institute of Foreign Languages, implement a jointly developed program on intercultural communication. The two professors first met in 1999 when Nabirokhina was a visitor in KU's communication studies department as a Junior Faculty Development Program fellow.

Paul Comolli, associate professor of economics, will participate in the June 2002 Fulbright German Studies Seminar in Leipzig, Cologne and Berlin. The topic of seminar will be "International Migration and National Identities." Comolli is one of 25 participants chosen not only from other U.S. universities but also from government agencies.

Patrick Dooley, associate professor of design, will team-teach with several colleagues at Fachhochschule Trier, in Trier, Germany, spring semester 2003 and research time-based media. The visual communications section of KU's Department of Design has had a student exchange with Fachhochschule Trier for the past two years. Dooley was instrumental in establishing this study abroad program.

Joshua Freeman, chair of the Department of Family Medicine at KU Medical Center, will spend part of the spring semester 2003 at the medical school of the Federal University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil. He will help develop a new program in family medicine as well as teach a special class.

Sivaprasad Gogineni, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, will conduct research at the University of Tasmania Antarctic Cooperative Research Center in Hobart, Australia. In collaboration with an Australian colleague, Gogineni will conduct theoretical and experimental research for developing ultra wideband radar for measuring the thickness of snow over ice. He will be in Australia during the fall semester.

Anita Herzfeld, associate professor of Latin American studies, will teach sociolinguistics at the English department of the School of Languages, National University, Asuncion, Paraguay, in summer 2003. She also will research speakers' attitudes regarding bilingualism in Paraguay, where both Spanish and GuaranÕ are spoken. Herzfeld has received six Fulbright grants. She first came to KU as a Fulbright student from Argentina and later either taught or conducted research as a Fulbright scholar in Costa Rica, Panama, Guatemala and Germany.

Gwynne Jenkins, assistant professor of anthropology and women's studies, will travel to Costa Rica to examine the gendered social history of politics, programs and practices surrounding sterilization and population planning in Costa Rica since 1955. In addition to contributing to existing knowledge regarding sterilization and population in that country, this research will add much-needed ethnographic information on the experiences of poor rural women. Jenkins will teach a graduate seminar at KU's partner institution, the University of Costa Rica in San Jose. She also was named an alternate by the U.S. Department of Education for a Fulbright-Hays faculty research award.

Gerald Mikkelson, professor of Slavic languages and literatures, received a 10-month extension of his Fulbright grant to Russia. Mikkelson will conduct seminars in English on translating literature from Russian to English, and he will give lectures in Russian on Alexander Pushkin and other Russian authors at St. Petersburg State University. Mikkelson received a honorary doctorate from St. Petersburg State University in June 2001. He also will spend four weeks conducting shorter versions of his courses at two other universities, one in Tomsk (western Siberia) and the other in Perm (Ural Mountains).

Garth Myers, associate professor of geography, has a five-month grant to research the implementation of participatory urban-planning strategies and use of geographic information systems in the Sustainable Cities Program in Zambia and in Tanzania. The South African Development Community is the key site area for the Sustainable Cities approach with great significance to urban development studies. During winter 2003, Myers will spend two months in Zambia and in summer 2003, three months in Tanzania. He previously has conducted research in East Africa.