NC State Faculty Receive Fulbright Scholar Awards

Three North Carolina State University faculty members and one graduate student have been chosen to participate in the Fulbright Scholar program to study and teach abroad during the 2008-09 academic year.

Fulbright grants are awarded each year to leading researchers, teachers and administrators at universities worldwide, allowing the recipients to travel, conduct research and teach abroad at host universities for up to one year.

The NC State scholars chosen to participate in the Fulbright program this year are:

• Dr. Tony K. Stewart, professor of south Asian religions and literatures, has received one of only 22 Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad awards given this year. Stewart will spend the 2009 calendar year in Bangladesh working on a research project, “Romance of the Pirs:  Popular Visions of Muslim Community in Early Modern Bengal,” which focuses on the religious traditions (Hindu and Muslim) of the early modern Bengal region.

• Dr. Elizabethann O’Sullivan, associate professor of public administration, has received a teaching and research fellowship that will send her to Malaysia, where her work will focus on international nongovernmental organizations and Malaysian public agencies.

• Dr. Ronald V. Fodor, professor of geology, has received an award to travel to Hungary for the spring semester of 2009 to teach graduate geology courses at Eotvos Lorand Technical University in Budapest.

• Yiyi Wong, who will receive her master’s degree in marine science in August, will be traveling to the Institute for Estuarine and Coastal Studies in Shanghai to continue her research on the global carbon cycle and focus on the interaction between the atmospheric and ocean interfaces.

The Fulbright Scholar Program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State – with the exception of the Fulbright-Hays award, which is administered by the Department of Education – and is the most prestigious international exchange program for scholars. Established in 1946 under legislation introduced by the late Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the program’s purpose is to build mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the rest of the world.

Recipients of Fulbright awards are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement and leadership potential in their fields.

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