Five University of Tennessee-Knoxville faculty and one student have earned Fulbright Awards to take part in international study, teaching, and research during 2004 and 2005.
Fulbright is the federal government’s flagship program in international educational exchange proposed to the U.S. Congress in 1945 by then freshman Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas.
UT faculty recipients are Dr. William Fox, Dr. Michael Handelsman, Dr. Naima Moustaid-Moussa, Dr. Jack Barkenbus, and Dr. Carol Harden. Student honoree is Jenessa Hunter who earned the master of arts degree in German in August.
Fox, the William B. Stokely Distinguished Professor of Business and director of the UT Center for Business and Economic Research, will teach and lecture fall semester as a Fulbright Distinguished Chair invited by the University in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Candidates for the Fulbright Distinguished Chairs Program, a new award this year, are senior scholars who have a significant publication and teaching record. Fox has worked on federalism issues in about 25 countries and has written extensively on the subject. He is one of only 30 Fulbright distinguished chairs named this year internationally.
Handelsman, professor of Spanish, is chair of UT-s Latin American Studies program and holds a Distinguished Professorship of Humanities in the UT College of Arts and Sciences. He has won a Fulbright Alumni Initiatives Award, and two years of funding, to develop a link between UT and the Universidad Andina Simon BolÃvar in Quito, Ecuador. This is only the second year the alumni award has been offered, and Handelsman-s proposal was one of 30 selected from some 250 applications.
He will lead a team from UT and the UASB to develop international curriculum at both institutions to encourage scholarship in Africana and Diaspora Studies, Global Studies, Latin American Studies, and Latin American Literature.
Barkenbus, executive director of the UT Energy, Environment and Resources Center, will be a Fulbright Scholar in Greece and Turkey March through May 2005 as part of the Aegean Initiative Program. Barkenbus will create a network to engage researchers at universities in initiating sustainable development to benefit the region.
Moustaid-Moussa, professor in the UT Department of Nutrition and Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station, was awarded a nine- month Fulbright Scholarship to the European Institute for Chemistry and Biology, affiliated with the University of Bordeaux, France. She will research applications of cell proteomics and signaling to studies of fat cell biology, obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, using the pancreas as a model system. She also will deliver lectures and seminars in nutrition, obesity and gene regulation. She began work in France in August.
Harden, UT professor of geography, was a Fulbright Scholar in Cuenca, Ecuador, from May to August 2004. She conducted field-based research on high altitude soils and glacial landforms with faculty and students at the Universidad de Cuenca and Cajas National Park personnel. Locally, the project contributed to better-informed management of water resources — downstream from the national park is the hydroelectric power plant that supplies 65 percent of Ecuador-s electric power. Globally, the research will contribute to ongoing scientific debate regarding the nature and sequences of climate change.
Barkenbus, Moustaid-Moussa, and Harden are three of about 800 winners of the traditional Fulbright Scholar grants who will travel to 140 countries during this academic year.
Hunter, who earned an undergraduate degree in communications from UT in 2002, won a Fulbright student award at the University of Hamburg, Germany, for fall 2004 and spring 2005 semesters. She-ll research German attitudes toward the use of English in German magazine and television.