Two Elon University faculty members have received Fulbright grants for 2011-12 to teach and conduct research overseas. Associate professor Glenn Scott was awarded a Fulbright lecture grant to teach at the University of the Ryukyus in Okinawa, Japan, and assistant professor Kim Jones will be collecting and analyzing oral histories in Brazil regarding the origins and development of the nation's universal national health care system, as well as supervising graduate research and helping to develop a Brazilian university's first Ph.D. program.
Scott’s grant is for full-time teaching over two semesters. The faculty member in the School of Communications will lead the following courses in English: “Mass Media in the United States and Japan,” “Global Media Topics” and “American Culture & Society” at in the School of Law and Letters at Ryukyus, a national research university with about 8,100 students.
“This is something I’ve wanted to do since I was in graduate school,” Scott said. “I’ve always seen higher education as a chance to provide chances for me to satisfy my curiosities and to go to places for a purpose. One reason we chose to come to Elon was because we heard that this is a place that is very interested in international activity and scholarship and inquiry.”
Scott’s wife, Misako, is from Kyushu, the mainland region directly north of Okinawa, so the couple and their son, Kevin, 12, make trips to Japan as often as they can. He also worked in Japan as a copy editor at Nikkei Weekly, an English language newspaper that supports the regular daily edition in Japanese, as the Tokyo bureau chief and then the Kyushu bureau chief at Stars and Stripes, and as a teacher in the University of Maryland University College program on its Japanese campus.
The Fulbright grant will cover 10 months, starting with his departure in mid-August, but Scott said he and his family will likely stay for 11 months to accommodate his son’s education at an English-language international school. Scott will return to Elon to teach in the fall of 2012.
“Elon officials have been very supportive, enthusiastic and helpful,” he said. “I hope the experience will make me a better professor and enrich me with ideas and opportunities to share with my students and colleagues. I love the fact this is a university that supports this kind of enriching activity.”
Jones will travel to Montes Claros, Brazil, from August through November as part of her ongoing research into the development of the country’s national health care program. Montes Claros was the epicenter of a regional model of health care first implemented in the 1970s that was later used as the basis of the national system.
Jones has taught, conducted research and supervised study abroad, undergraduate, and graduate research in Montes Claros since 1995, when she was first invited to the State University of Montes Claros by the university president. While there, she led classes and conducted research with faculty and students in the medical school and social sciences divisions.
As an assistant professor of anthropology at Elon since 2005, Jones has brought three different groups of students on short-term study abroad programs to Montes Claros, including a service-learning program where students participated in a playground reform project with workers at the university hospital. She’s supervised two undergraduate research projects conducted at the university hospital.
As the primary investigator of team of seven researchers from State University of Montes Claros last summer, Jones completed a project that entailed collecting and analyzing dozens of oral histories focusing on the origins development of the national universal public health care system from health care professionals, professors, and policy makers in Montes Claros. The Fulbright research award will support the expansion of the study to other municipalities in Northern Minas Gerais, the Brazilian state where Montes Claros is located.
“(The Fulbright) would benefit my scholarship and personal goals by allowing me the opportunity to tell the story that changed my perspective on health care and inspired me to a career as an educator with a strong commitment to engaged, collaborative, and cooperative learning and research through immersive, interdisciplinary experiences in diverse cultural contexts,” she said in her Fulbright proposal. “It would also allow me to investigate and open opportunities for future international education experiences for faculty and students from Brazil and the U.S.
“I would hope that it could also help shed light on the potential for addressing socio-economic inequalities that affect the health and well-being of societies throughout the world.”