Three SDSU Faculty Earn Fulbright Scholar Grants

Contact: Lorena Nava
San Diego State University
(619) 594-3952 office; (619) 309-5179
lnava@mail.sdsu.edu

SAN DIEGO – (Monday, Dec. 19, 2005) – Three San Diego State University faculty members are headed abroad on Fulbright Scholar grants for the first half of 2006.

“The Fulbright program recognizes some of the world’s distinguished scholars,” Provost Nancy Marlin said. “San Diego State is extremely proud to have our faculty recognized for their research and with the opportunity to share that knowledge internationally.”

The three newest Fulbright scholars raise SDSU’s total number of recipients since 1993 to 41. They will continue their research or lecture series from early 2006 until summer.

The recipients are:

-- Alan Edwin Kilpatrick, Ph.D., is a professor of American Indian Studies. He will lecture on ethnic studies in Native American literature at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain.

-- Norma Ojeda, Ph.D., is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Chicana/Chicano Studies. Her research on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and family choices and personal growth of young Mexicanas in transnational communities will take her to the Colegio de Frontera Norte in Tijuana, Mexico.

-- Patrick M. Sullivan is an Associate Librarian in the division of Library and Information Access. He specializes in the field of border libraries, services and librarians. He will be continuing this research at the Center for Advanced Technical Studies (CETYS) in Tijuana, Mexico.

“I'm honored to have been selected to participate as a Fulbright Scholar,” Sullivan said. “I'm excited about sharing the wealth of resources that we have here at SDSU with Baja California library professionals and am eager to discover and make our researchers aware of the treasures the Baja institutions have to offer us.”

SDSU also is hosting a visiting researcher under the Fulbright program. Pei-Li Wu from the National Taiwan Normal University in Teipei has been researching individual and family resilience, specifically examining resources for surviving trauma in immigrant families. She will be with the university until January 2006.

This year, the university also saw its first six Fulbright student scholars off to Austria, Germany, the Slovak Republic, the Netherlands, Mexico and Malaysia.

“As our research and international collaboration has increased, so has recognition from the Fulbright Scholars Program,” Marlin said. “We expect our involvement in this highly prestigious program to continue growing.”

The Fulbright Program is a highly regarded international education exchange program and is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Since its establishment in the 1946 under legislation introduced by the late Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the program has hosted more than 265,000 American and foreign university students, K-12 teachers, university faculty and professionals.

SDSU is the oldest and largest institution of higher education in the San Diego region. Founded in 1897, SDSU offers bachelor’s degrees in 81 areas, master’s degrees in 72 and doctorates in 16. SDSU’s nearly 33,000 students participate in academic curricula distinguished by direct faculty contact and an increasingly international emphasis that prepares them for a global future. For more information, visit www.sdsu.edu.

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