Florida State University professors are doing their part to promote leadership, learning and understanding between cultures, thanks to Fulbright Scholarships that will allow them to study abroad.
Richard C. Feiock, professor of public administration and policy and affiliate professor of political science, will spend three months at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, studying the privatization of local government services.
Elizabeth Goldsmith, professor of textiles and consumer sciences, will spend three months at the University of West Indies at Trinidad and Tobago, helping to develop programs in human ecology.
Tomi Gomory, associate professor of social work, will teach and conduct research at the University of Pecs in Pecs, Hungary.
Lisa Ryoko Wakamiya, assistant professor of Slavic languages and literatures, will spend six months in Moscow conducting research for a book on writers exiled in the last decades of the Soviet period who have since returned to Russia.
Jim Dever, a recent MBA graduate from FSU’s Panama City campus, will teach entrepreneurship at the MBA program of the Kazakhstan Institute of Management Economics and Strategic Research.
Feiock’s research in Korea will build on his National Science Foundation- funded project that examines bargaining between governments and business organizations. The study will investigate how the characteristics of markets, goods and local political systems influence service delivery choices of local governments.
“I am honored to receive this award and am excited not only about the research but the opportunity to visit Korea and renew friendships with friends and former students,” said Feiock, who is also the Ph.D. program director for FSU’s Askew School of Public Administration and Policy.
Goldsmith’s human ecology research will focus on the areas of consumer economics and family resource management while teaching related courses. In addition to teaching at the University of West Indies at Trinidad and Tobago, she will conduct family-focused research in both rural and urban areas of the island nation.
“My research projects will involve developing strategies for caregiving for the rural elderly of Trinidad and Tobago,” said Goldsmith, who also plans to measure the impact of dual incomes on family well-being, parental leave and childcare. She intends to co-author research-related articles and presentations with UWI faculty.
Gomory will teach two courses, critical psychopathology in English and comparative social welfare policy in Hungarian. The courses will compare science and policy developed in the United States with what is done in Hungary. He also will research a successful University of Pecs-managed therapeutic community for drug and alcohol users, which is supported by the Hungarian government.
“This will create a critical dialogue with Hungarian students and academics and hopefully benefit all of us,” Gomory said. “This experience will then be integrated into my teaching and research here at FSU on my return, offering a more enriched experience for my students and a broader perspective on my research efforts.”
While in Moscow, Wakamiya will research unpublished and confiscated documents and manuscripts by Russian writers who were exiled in the 1970s and ’80s. These materials, until recently kept in closed archives, along with interviews she will conduct with several writers, will serve as the basis of her current book “The Rhetoric of Exile and
Return: Locating Contemporary Russian Writing.”
“It’s a real honor to be chosen” for a Fulbright Scholarship, Wakamiya said. “There were only eight available for scholars to do research in Russia,” she added, and she is honored to be among them.
After retiring from his successful entrepreneurial endeavors at the ageof 41, Dever decided to return to school and complete his college education in the hopes of one day teaching at the university level. Completing his Associate degree at Gulf Coast Community College, he transferred to FSU Panama City. He earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration in the fall of 2003 and finished the master’s program in business administration in the fall of 2004. He is the first Fulbright recipient from the Panama City campus.
Feiock, Gomory, Goldsmith, Wakamiya and Dever are among approximately 800 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad to 140 countries for the 2005-2006 academic year through the Fulbright Scholar Program. Recipients of Fulbright Scholar awards are selected
on the basis of academic or professional achievement and because they have demonstrated extraordinary leadership potential in their fields.