I am writing a chapter entitled “The Value of a Fulbright: Internationalizing Education One Person at a Time” for inclusion in the volume Internationalizing the Communication Curriculum in an Age of Globalization: Why, What, and How, to be edited by Paaige K. Turner, Soumia Bardhan, Tracey Quigley Holden, and Eddah Mbula Mutua, to be published by Routledge.
There are already 16 stories about Fulbrights posted to this website, but I am now asking these scholars, as well as anyone else who has held any of the various types of Fulbrights, to email me, so that I can include your story in this overview. (In addition, I would like to add more personal narratives about Fulbright experiences to this website, so if you have not yet told me about your experience, let’s talk.) The specific focus in my chapter will be on what happened after you returned to your home campus: how did you revise your own courses or influence others in your department in ways that helped to internationalize the curriculum?
Further details about what I plan to write:
Fulbright awards are an obvious way to influence the teaching of specific instructors, given that they finance travel of a single person to a different country, and clearly international travel is one critical component of internationalizing a curriculum.
This chapter will:
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Summarize the history of the Fulbright program, providing an overview of the various types of awards currently available, and supplying resources for those who wish to learn more about the program.
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Describe two Fulbright awards I have personally received, under two different programs, one to bring in an international scholar to my US university, and the other for me to visit a university in Portugal.
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Present a series of case studies of other scholars who have received Fulbrights as a way to share breadth of experience. The goal will be to share both some specifics of particularly compelling examples, as well as make generalizations from the entire corpus.
Provisional conclusion:
Fulbrights obviously have the greatest impact on the person most directly involved, who is given the opportunity to move between countries. But that person has students. And that person has colleagues. So, as it turns out, changing one person at a time works well as a way to internationalize the curriculum.
Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz, Director
Center for Intercultural Dialogue
Center for Intercultural Dialogue 