NC State Faculty Receive Fulbright Scholar Awards

Three North Carolina State University faculty members have been chosen to participate in the Fulbright Scholars Program to teach and study abroad in the 2009-2010 academic year.

Each year Fulbright grants are awarded to researchers, teachers and administrators of universities around the world. The grants allow for up to one year of research abroad at host universities. The recipients are chosen on the basis of academic or professional achievement, and leadership potential in their respective fields.

This year’s Fulbright Scholars are Dr. William J. Kinsella, an associate professor in the Department of Communication, Dr. Nora Haenn, an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and Dr. Bronson Bullock, an associate professor in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources.

Haenn received the Fulbright Council for International Exchange of Scholars grant to commence researching the effects of international migration alongside Mexican colleagues at El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR) in Mexico. She will be looking at communities located in the country’s rural and tropical south where she will consider how women take on full household responsibility once their husbands migrate. Haenn will be researching farm families to document how they spend finances and whether these expenditures entail investments in new kinds of land use that change tropical ecologies. Also, she will be examining how local governments plan for the social and economic changes that are associated with migration.

Kinsella will study in Germany at the University of Stuttgart from March to June of 2010. He will undertake a research project titled “Nuclear Energy in Germany: Institutional, Political, and Public Communication in a Changing Social Context.” He will also lecture on “Communication Perspectives on Energy and Environmental Issues.”

Bullock will perform research and lecture at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Umeå, Sweden, where he will collaborate on forest biometrics research and teaching with faculty in the Department of Forest Resource Management. The Fulbright Scholarship will be used to refine current forest growth models used in estimating growth in Swedish forests. This research will increase the accuracy of forest growth projections that are used to make natural resource management decisions in Sweden. Bullock will also co-teach two graduate level courses and one undergraduate course.

The Fulbright Scholar Program was established in 1946 under the late Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas’ proposed legislation and is the most prestigious international exchange program for Scholars. The U.S. Department of State sponsors the program and the Department of Education administers the Fulbright-Hays award. The program’s purpose is to build a mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the rest of the world.

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