Some faculty members at Washington University in St. Louis have received awards from the Fulbright Program for the 2013-14 academic year for short-term projects in areas ranging from architecture to education to medicine.
Jim Beirne, director of external relations at the Career Center, received an award for work at United States International University in Nairobi, Kenya, where he will help guide the school’s recently formed career center. During two visits in the next five years, Beirne will lecture, lead workshops, consult on organizational design and assessment protocols and help establish and develop sustainable employer relationships to aid the career center.
“I see this as a clear recognition of the world-class quality of the career services Washington University has developed in the last decade under (Career Center Director) Mark Smith’s leadership,” Beirne said.
Eric Mumford, PhD, professor of architecture at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, received an award to lead two seminars, of two weeks each, for design faculty at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru in Lima. In July 2013, he gave lectures, “On the Development of Modern Urbanism and its Implications for Education in Urban Design” and “El Plan Regulador de Bogotá (1950) and the Emergence of Urban Design,” and participated in meetings with the dean, chair and faculty of the architecture school in discussing the design program and proposed new curricula in urbanism and landscape design.
“Lima is booming at the moment and has an intense level of activity of all kinds,” Mumford said.
Kathy Steiner-Lang, director of the Office for International Students and Scholars, traveled to Korea last summer to attend the International Education Administrators Seminar. Eight international educators from around the United States attended the seminar. Steiner-Lang and the other educators attended readings, lectures and tours related to the Korean educational system, and they learned about its history, culture, politics and economic system during the two-week program. She also visited organizations in various parts of Korea, including Seoul, Daejeon, Daegu, Busan and Andong.
L. Lewis Wall, MD, DPhil, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the School of Medicine and professor of anthropology in Arts and Sciences, received an award for work at the College of Health Sciences at Mekelle University in northern Ethiopia. He will help establish a residency training program in obstetrics and gynecology and institute quality-assurance programs in maternal-child health and gynecologic surgery in that college’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Additionally, Wall plans to develop ongoing educational exchange programs between Washington University School of Medicine and the College of Health Sciences and between Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Ayder Referral Hospital, the College of Health Sciences’ teaching hospital.
“I’m going to Ethiopia to transform women’s lives,” Wall said.
More than 400 U.S. faculty and professionals are traveling abroad during the year through the Fulbright Specialists Program. The Fulbright Specialists Program was created in 2000 to complement the traditional Fulbright Scholar Program. It provides short-term academic opportunities to prominent U.S. faculty and professionals to support curricular and faculty development and institutional planning at postsecondary academic institutions around the world.
The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government. It’s designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and those of other countries.
Fulbright grant recipients are chosen based on their academic or professional achievement.