The J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board has announced the selection of two California State University, Dominguez Hills professors–Kate Fawver, professor of history, and Kim Trimble, professor of teacher education–as Fulbright Scholars for the 2014-2015 academic year.
With their selection, CSU Dominguez Hills will have three professors in the Fulbright program this year. In March it was announced that Nancy Erbe, professor of negotiation, conflict resolution and peace building, was awarded a prestigious distinguished chair Fulbright at Pontifícia Universidade Católica in Rio de Janeiro.
The Fulbright program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and is one of the most prestigious international education exchange programs in the world designed to increase mutual understanding between peoples from the U.S. and other countries. The core Fulbright U.S. Scholars program sends approximately 800 American scholars and professors each year to more than 125 countries to teach and conduct research in a wide variety of academic and professional fields.
Fawver will be a visiting scholar in the Faculty of History at Udmurt State University in Izhevsk, the capital of the Udmurt Republic in Russia, 700 miles east of Moscow.
“I am deeply honored to receive a Fulbright Scholars grant as a representative of my discipline, my university and the United States in Russia,” Fawver said. “My award enhances the stature of the Department of History at CSUDH and underscores the commitment of the College of Arts and Humanities to internationalism, globalization, and international education.
While at Udmurt from August 1, 2014, to July 31, 2015, Fawver will teach courses in early American history, the American Revolution, the Civil War, and American family history, deliver keynote lectures on American federalism, the rise of American democracy, and the history of American capitalism, and serve as editor for the history and philosophy series of the university’s scientific journal “Vestnik,” among other projects.
“The historians at Udmurt State University and I have already discussed collaborative projects focusing on unfree labor systems, inheritance patterns, and land distribution in the history of Russia and the United States that will be developed more fully during the grant period,” Fawver said.
Trimble has been awarded an unprecedented third Fulbright Scholars award to teach in the Master of Arts in Teaching English as a Foreign Language program (MA TEFL) of the Graduate School of Education at Bilkent University in Ankara, the capital of Turkey. He previously was awarded Fulbright grants to the program in 2003-04 and 2009-10.
“I am thrilled to be able to go back to Turkey and work there. My Fulbright experiences at Bilkent have been among the most rewarding, both personally and professionally, and have opened up new directions in my career,” Trimble said. “It is a rare opportunity to be able to have received a third Fulbright fellowship. These awards are very competitive and I am grateful to my department and the university in supporting me in these efforts.”
Trimble will be working with current Turkish teachers of English education who have been selected for the competitive 10-month MA TEFL program, which requires candidates to complete a master’s thesis of original research entirely in English. He also plans to work with faculty on the use of technology in the classroom, something he was involved in 2009-10 when he part of a pilot online program between Bilkent and Mosul University in Northern Iraq.
“While the technology was subject to frequent failures and civil unrest and violent military clashes in northern Iraq often disrupted class meeting times, the experience highlighted for me the power of Internet-based instruction,” recalled Trimble, who returned to CSU Dominguez Hills and was part of a four-university exchange program that taught online synchronous courses between Spain, Italy, Bakersfield and CSU Dominguez Hills and the use of iPads in the classroom. “I am hoping to be able to integrate some of these technologies–both synchronous and asynchronous modes–to strengthen and expand the MA TEFL program.”
