Three University professors have been named Fulbright Scholars for the 2008-09 academic year. All three will finish their research in 2009 and are currently studying on two continents.
The Fulbright Program is an international educational exchange that brings overseas academics and professionals to U.S. universities and sends U.S. faculty and professionals abroad. Fulbright Scholars lecture and conduct research in a variety of fields.
More than 1,000 U.S. citizens received Fulbright awards this year and about as many received money to study and lecture in the U.S. One scholar from China is teaching at the University under a Fulbright grant during the current academic year. In 2007-08, for the first time in at least 18 years, no University faculty were named Fulbright scholars.
Lise Nelson
Nelson used her Fulbright to study the shift to a democratic local government in Mexico by focusing on indigenous women in the Michoacan region. She has studied this subject in the past, she said, and used her Fulbright scholarship to add to her body of research and work on a book.
While in Mexico, she also taught a class at the College of Michoacan about the Anglocentric version of history in relation to the Americas. She said her Fulbright experience helped her Spanish language skills and that “a lot of the Fulbright is about building professional relationships,” which she was able to do on this trip.
Although Nelson had been to Mexico before, she said that this trip was different because she was able to travel and see some historical architecture she had never seen before.
Philip Scher
Scher is currently in Barbados, studying “the role that history plays in contemporary society, looking at how such histories live in buildings, monuments etc. and the politics of historic preservation,” he wrote in an e-mail. He is particularly interested in colonial history and how it is preserved in buildings.
“I am very honored to be a Fulbright Scholar and think it is a wonderful program that tries to bring scholars together from different societies and backgrounds. Conducting my research while having an affiliation with the University of the West Indies at Cave Hill has been invaluable,” he wrote.
Scher is currently in Barbados with his family. He said the educational system is very different, and has provided his 6-year-old with a great deal of homework and discipline. So far, he has loved his Fulbright experience, which is his second. The first was in 1993 in Trinidad.
Lori Kruckenberg
Kruckenberg, a musicology professor in the School of Music and Dance, has been studying in Erlangen, Germany, since September 2008 and will finish in August 2009. The topic of her research is “Messine Chant and the Loranigian Axis: The Tradition of Tropes from Metz,” and is conducted at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.
Kruckenberg has been a professor at the University since 2001. She has studied at Bethany College in Kansas and the University of Iowa.
She has delivered lectures and conferences for the American Musicological Society and the International Congress on Medieval Studies. She has spoken around Europe on the topic of music history, in places that include Germany, Norway and the Netherlands.
Chen-Lung Chin
Chin is a professor from the National Chengchi University in Taipei, Taiwan. He is teaching in the University department of accounting and conducting research on “Institutional Investors, Analyst Relationship and Analyst Earning Forecast.” He has been at the University since August 2008 and will complete his time in July 2009.
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