Vox Home > '08-'09 Academic Year > December 1, 2008 Issue >

Seven Professors Win Fulbrights

One Portuguese scholar studies at Dartmouth on a Fulbright

Seven Dartmouth faculty members were recently awarded Fulbright scholarships to support innovative teaching and research activities abroad. Five were named Fulbright Scholars by the Council for International Exchange of Scholars, which is part of the U.S. Department of State.

• Christiane Donahue, the new director of Dartmouth's Institute for Writing and Rhetoric, and associate professor of linguistics
• Ursula Gibson '76, professor of engineering at Thayer School
• Pamela Jenkins, associate professor of community and family medicine and of pediatrics at Dartmouth Medical School
• David Kotz '86, professor of computer science
• Michael Mastanduno, the Nelson Rockefeller Professor of Government

Two received Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellowships from the U.S. Department of Education.

• Ioana Chitoran, associate professor of French and of linguistics and cognitive science
• Jonathan Smolin, assistant professor in Asian and Middle Eastern studies

Ioana Chitoran Christiane Donahue Ursula Gibson Pamela Jenkins David Kotz Michael Mastanduno Jonathan Smolin

Dartmouth is also hosting Carla Pimontel, a Fulbright Scholar from Portugal. Pimontel is a researcher with New University of Lisbon. She is working with Matt Ayres, professor of biological sciences, on studies of forest pest populations, global climate change, and the adaptive management of forests.

IOANA CHITORAN's Fulbright-Hays fellowship will fund a combined research trip to Azerbaijan and the Republic of Georgia. She will study the mechanism of a completed sound change in the history of the Georgian language by examining a similar sound change currently in progress in Lezgi, a Caucasian language spoken mainly in northern Azerbaijan and Daghestan.

"This approach allows me to test specific hypotheses about the historical change in one language by using the living laboratory of another language," says Chitoran. "Part of the fellowship will also fund a longer stay in Georgia and enrollment in a Georgian language course, which will help in my efforts to bring research of the languages and cultures of the Caucasus to Dartmouth. The Caucasus is one of the areas of the world with the highest linguistic diversity, and several unusual structural properties of its languages have significant implications for current linguistic theory."

CHRISTIANE DONAHUE, who specializes in writing and linguistics, will study at the University of Charles de Gaulle, in Lille, France, which is in the Nord Pas de Calais region near the Belgium border.

"I will be pursuing a project that examines how different countries, specifically the United States and France, approach writing instruction at the university level," says Donahue. "I'm looking into at different kinds of methods, and comparing challenges and interventions."

URSULA GIBSON '76 will study at the VTT Technical Research Center of Finland in Espoo, Finland. A nanomaterials specialist, she is investigating the use of zinc oxide nanostructures as a way of imparting UV protection capabilities.

"My collaborators in Finland are interested in improved protection for wood products," says Gibson, "but the work is more generally applicable to other materials. The use of nanostructures is important because they don't change the appearance of the underlying material. Zinc oxide is a particularly attractive material to use as a UV blocker because it absorbs a wide range of UV light and doesn't degrade as it does its job. I hope to connect this research to the timber industry in Vermont and New Hampshire."

PAMELA JENKINS received a Fulbright Scholar Program Lectureship Grant. She will be hosted by St. John's Medical College in Bangalore, India, an institution that trains health care professionals primarily to serve the needy in rural areas. Jenkins will use her experience in the areas of safety, efficiency, cost, and evidence-based medicine to guide her students through practical improvement projects.

"Quality improvement has the potential to extend health care to underserved populations in India," says Jenkins. "The goal is to do more with existing resources. My students will be faculty members from several medical schools in Bangalore, and the projects we work on will be specific to their needs. I expect to bring back new insights to tackle the complexity of our own health-care system."

DAVID KOTZ '86, director of Dartmouth's Institute for Security, Technology, and Society, is working in the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India. Kotz's interests lie in wireless computer networks, and, in India, he will contribute to the rapidly growing Wi-Fi research community there. He plans to pursue two research projects, one to deploy a wireless-network measurement system, the other to monitor wireless-network traffic and user mobility patterns to develop new models of how the network is used.

"This project has many benefits," says Kotz. "For my host university and to India, I hope I will enhance their capability to experiment with Wi-Fi networks, which will ultimately lead to enabling the development and deployment of networks to better serve the rural population. For me, I'm excited to explore rural-broadband challenges in India, and learn more about new network-modeling methods."

MICHAEL MASTANDUNO, also the associate dean for the social sciences, received his fellowship last summer to participate in the Fulbright Specialists Program in Japan. He gave the keynote lecture at the annual American studies conference in Japan at Nanzan University in Nagoya, and he spoke at the U.S.-Japan Foundation of the University of Tokyo and at two Japanese public policy foundations. His lectures focused on U.S. foreign policy in the context of the then-upcoming presidential elections. Mastanduno studies American foreign policy and economic competition among the United States, the European Community, and Japan. He is also a scholar of international relations theory.

"It was great to get the perspective of a variety of Japanese scholars and citizens on the transition in the United States and what it would mean for U.S.-Japan relations and global politics," says Mastanduno.

JONATHAN SMOLIN received a fellowship to complete a book on the recent spread of police fiction in Moroccan society. He'll be based in Rabat, Morocco, and will conduct research in the National Archives. He will also work with actors, directors, and producers in the television and cinema industries. Smolin's interests range from modern Arabic literature, cinema, and mass media, to police fiction and narratives of illegal immigration to Europe.

"I will write a book on the origins of Arabic police fiction in novels, newspapers, and television programming," says Smolin. "In particular, I plan to explore the relationship between police fiction and recent large-scale changes in Moroccan society, such as improvements in freedom of expression and human rights. I hope that this research will benefit our growing Arabic language and culture program at Dartmouth as well as the Comparative Literature Program."

Sponsored by the United States Department of State, the Fulbright Scholar Program supports educational exchange projects in more than 150 countries. Its goal is to increase mutual understanding between the peoples of the United States and other countries, through the exchange of persons, knowledge, and skills.

The Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellowship program supports the improvement of modern foreign language and culture studies in the United States by providing opportunities for scholars to conduct research abroad.

Questions or comments about this article? We welcome your feedback.