Mara Adelman
Seattle University
Fulbright Specialist to Ethiopia
Communication Professor Mara Adelman (Ph.D. U. of Washington), currently an associate professor of communication at Seattle University, recently received a Fulbright Specialist award. She will join the Department of Communication at the University of Mekelle in northern Ethiopia next October-December, 2012. The Fulbright Specialist Program links American academics with colleagues at host institutions overseas for short-term collaborative projects. Adelman will work with faculty and students for six weeks and will present workshops and seminars, consult, and collaborate on community outreach activities. The university is home to 23,000 students. Adelman received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington and then joined Northwestern University. She came to Seattle University, Department of Communication in 1994. She is author of Beyond Language: Cross-cultural communication for ESL (co-authored with Deena Levine; Prentice Hall, 1987, 1997), and an award-winning ethnographic study of the second largest home for persons with AIDS, The Fragile Community (co-authored with Lawrence R. Frey; Lawrence Erlbaum, 1997). Her research and scholarship focus on cross-cultural communication and adaptation, restorative solitude, interpersonal and organizational social interaction.
Dr. Adelman encourages communication faculty to apply for the Fulbright Specialist position. This procedure is quite simple (1-2 page application), efficient, and the award position lasts for 5 years. You are encouraged to cultivate relationships with international universities that then invite you and/or you respond with short proposals from universities that review your Fulbright resume. Dr. Adelman responded to the call for an appointment to Ethiopia with a brief paragraph and a list of courses, workshops, lectures, and public outreach. She carefully read the proposal and tried to address the needs of the University of Mekelle. Fulbright Specialist appointments run 2-6 weeks. Her appointment is for 42 days, with coverage for airfare, housing, food, and a daily stipend. In order to share and speak upon a broad range of topics, Dr. Adelman has solicited the help of people in the communication discipline to send information and powerpoints that could be used in public presentations; and she is seeking donations for small laptop notebooks that she can bring to faculty and students at the University of Mekelle.
**See Mara Adelman’s description of her Fulbright after it was completed.
Center for Intercultural Dialogue 