Three Grand Valley State University professors have earned Core Fulbright Scholar awards, giving them the opportunity to travel overseas for a semester to teach or conduct research. The three professors awarded were Lisa Feurzeig, Brian Phillips and Jitendra Mishra. 

The Core Fulbright Scholar Program offers more than 500 research, teaching or combination research/teaching awards to U.S. faculty and experienced professionals in more than 125 countries.

Feurzeig, professor of music at GVSU, earned a research award to travel to Austria, but she will also be traveling to Germany and Hungary. She described the application process for the grant as quite strenuous, saying she had to think of a few different ideas before settling on one.

The project statement, the main component of a Fulbright application, is peer-reviewed in the U.S. and abroad. This is where applicants document their relevant experience, teaching, research philosophies and interests, adaptability and planned activities.

For her research, Feurzeig is going to be looking at three companies that specialize in operetta, which is a light, comic opera that was popular in the later 19th and early 20th centuries.

“My interest is to see when they’re doing productions of these works that are not new, that are old works, how they are shaping them or staging them so that they have something to do with current situations,” Feurzeig said.

She will travel abroad during the fall 2017 semester and is hoping to bring back a lot of personal experience to share with her students.

“Operetta itself is kind of a small thing in the whole music world, but the issue of how music is related to current events and situations I think is a very big (issue) that can apply in lots of situations,” Feurzeig said.

Phillips, associate professor of sociology, received a teaching award to travel to the Cracow University of Economics in Poland during the winter 2018 semester.

He will teach courses on American culture, social stratification in the U.S. and a faculty seminar on current economic and social issues. While there, Phillips will also conduct research on how sociology majors prepare themselves for life after graduation.

“A combined total of five researchers from Cracow University and GVSU are currently engaged in a project that asks students what they are doing outside their academic studies that will assist them in the labor market and their labor market pursuits,” he said. “Also, what types of opportunities do these undergraduate sociology majors believe will be available to them after they graduate.”

As a result of teaching in Poland, Phillips plans to bring to life some concepts, theories and ethnographies that Polish students have about American society. He hopes this will help GVSU students understand the interconnection between their lives and the larger general social picture.

“International experiences for both professors and students with an educational framework, I’m talking an educational framework as opposed to merely vacationing, not only allows for a greater understanding for another’s history and culture but also offers us a unique opportunity to see our own culture from a different vantage point,” Phillips said.

Mishra, professor of management, will be traveling to India to teach at the Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH). He will teach graduate courses in international management, international human resources management and organizational behavior.

BIMTECH, ranked one of the leading business schools in India, offers post-graduate and doctoral programs in management and business.

The Core Fulbright Scholar Program is sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs in the United States Department of State. For more information, visit www.cies.org/program/core-fulbright-us-scholar-program.