By Joshua Snader ’20, Staff Writer
LVC is among the top schools in producing Fulbright students. However, students are not the only ones receiving these awards; two professors have also been awarded Fulbright’s over the past year.
The Fulbright program has been run by the United States Department of State since 1946 and is awarded to students who display academic excellence and leadership potential to study, teach English and conduct research abroad. The Fulbright is also presented to scholars, teachers and faculty to lecture and conduct research overseas.
Dr. Christopher Dolan, professor of politics and global studies, is one of the LVC faculty members to have earned this award. Dolan has been awarded a Fulbright to teach and conduct research in Kosovo, a partially recognized state in southeastern Europe.
“There are three different components to my Fulbright grant that have to be fulfilled with the State Department,” Dolan said. “The first is I will be doing a research project on the future role of NATO in southeastern Europe, so the Balkans. The second component will be a service element, where I will be working with civil society groups. The third component is I will be teaching a course on Kosovo’s integration with NATO and the European Union.”
From February through July 2020, Dolan will be co-teaching two political science courses at the University of Prishtina, World Politics for Kosovar/Albanian undergraduate students and a course on integrating the Balkans into the European Union for graduate students. Dolan’s work will expand beyond the classroom as well.
“It is going to be really interesting working with groups on the ground in the country and see how the US plays a role through USAID, the United States Agency for International Development, NATO operations, the US embassy outreach to promote anti-corruption efforts in the country, and to play a small roll in that.”
While in Kosovo, Dolan hopes to find time to write his next book. The book will focus on US foreign policy and the future of NATO. The goal of the program is to promote United States foreign policy interests however Dolan also sees this opportunity as a way of promoting LVC to Kosovo, where he would like to establish a student exchange program.
Dr. Dolan is not the only professor who has participated in the Fulbright Program, Dr. Kathleen Tacelosky, professor of Spanish, spent the last few spring semesters researching in Mexico. Tacelosky research has focused on transnational students moving between the United States and Mexico.
“These transnational students, defined as those who have one or more years of schooling in the U.S. and are now in Mexican schools, have been the topic of my research since I was awarded my first Fulbright (2010-2011)”, Tacelosky said. “I taught two university courses and I interviewed and observed transnational students in elementary and middle schools and visited them at their homes.”
Tacelosky, with her second Fulbright in 2018, began educating professors on how to meet the needs of these transnational students.
“Thanks to the Fulbright Grant (January – June 2018), I was able to offer workshops, webinars and training sessions to current and future classroom teachers as well as English teachers,” Tacelosky said. “Now, even though the Fulbright funding has ended, the project continues. Invited by the Secretary of Education in the State of Zacatecas, I am creating a video-based, ten-module course to be incorporated into the curriculum at the state’s five teacher training colleges.”
Any students who would like to be involved in Tacelosky’s project may contact her at tacelosk@lvc.edu.