December 2006

GW Fulbright Scholars Shine, Set Records

GW’s five faculty Fulbright Scholars are (back) Liang Yu, Lars Willnat, Sean Cleary, (front) David Drummond Gow, and Geralyn Schulz.

By Zak M. Salih

GW student Emily Green is examining freedom of the press and journalism this fall in the Philippines thanks to a Fulbright award. Green is one of 11 GW students awarded Fulbright fellowships this year, tying a GW record and placing the University 21st in the nation for the number of 2006-07 student Fulbright fellows. Five faculty members also earned Fulbright awards this year, ranking GW first among Washington, D.C., area universities.

Established in 1946 by GW
alumnus Sen. J. William Fulbright, J.D. ’34, the Fulbright Program enables students and faculty to study and
conduct research in nations across
the globe. The program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs with financial support from Congress.

“We are very pleased by our students’ success in the Fulbright competition,” says Francis DuVinage, director for GW’s Center for Undergraduate Fellowships and Research. “This confirms what we knew: that we have a critical mass of extremely bright, intellectually accomplished students who are serious about engaging the world’s peoples, cultures, and languages.” GW student awardees include eight undergraduate students and three graduate students.

For her part, Green believes the Fulbright fellowship will be critical in attaining her career and life objectives. “I would like to become a journalist, and I think the Fulbright will contribute enormously to fulfilling that goal,” says Green, who is writing for an investigative magazine called Newsbreak while in the Philippines. Other GW student Fulbright fellows will study discrimination against immigrant populations in Germany and youth political culture in Estonia.

Faculty member Lars Willnat, associate professor of media and public affairs and international affairs, just returned from three months as a Fulbright scholar at the Universiti Purtra Malaysia. While there, he explored the relationship between developing Asian democracies and their culture, media, and politics. Willnat also developed public opinion polls examining the media’s role in political participation and the “stable tension” between the Chinese and Malays.

This January, Liang Yu, associate professor of tourism and hotel management, won’t be far from Malaysia when he conducts research in Cambodia on future purchase behavior and international tourist satisfaction. “Given the recent surge in the country’s international tourism, I am interested in investigating international tourist perception of satisfaction with Cambodia and intention to return or recommend the country,” he says.

David Gow, Baker professor of anthropology and international affairs, will spend the spring semester teaching at the University of Cauca in Colombia.
His research there will concentrate on Colombia’s first indigenous governor, Taita Floro Tunubala, and a forthcoming book, Countering Development: Indigenous Modernity and the Moral Imagination.

Spring will find Sean D. Cleary, associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics, teaching epidemiology at Nepal’s Tribhuvan University, Institute of Medicine in Kathmandu. Cleary also will examine the spatial distribution of diseases in Nepal through geographic information systems.

“Applying small area analysis techniques in Nepal can potentially have a significant impact on disease control for infectious diseases,” he says. “It will also be a
useful tool for illuminating and understanding health disparities.”

Geralyn Schulz, associate professor of speech and hearing science, will use her
Fulbright award to research speech rehabilitation at Australia’s University of Queensland.

“This Fulbright project not only furthers my clinical research goal of developing and assessing more efficacious therapy methods for the rehabilitation of speech
in persons who have had neurological damage, it also furthers the goal of speech pathology in the U.S. and Australia,” she says.

Send feedback to: bygeorge@gwu.edu