Two Calvin professors receive Fulbrights!

Summary: Two Calvin college professors have earned prestigious Fulbright Awards for 2010-2011, which are funded by the U.S. Department of State.

See full stories:
www.calvin.edu/news/2009-10/fulbright-aay
www.calvin.edu/news/2009-10/patterson-fulbright

Two Calvin college professors have earned prestigious Fulbright Awards for 2010-2011. Funded by the U.S. Department of State, the awards are scholarships established to foster international research.

Henk Aay, Calvin professor of geology, geography and environmental studies (GEO), will research in the Netherlands from March to June, 2011, focusing on documentary films made about that country. The films he will study were made by the Dutch government and distributed throughout the U.S. from 1942 to 1974 by the Netherlands Information Bureau (NIB). He will be screening a sizeable sampling of films from the NIB collection, comparing them with other documentaries about the Netherlands made at the time.

"Dutch-American relations have long been studied with many different topical themes and viewpoints," said Aay. "This study will add a new dimension to this literature by focusing on cultural diplomacy via film."

Aay is a native of the Netherlands and has been researching Dutch language and culture for 25 years. He has spent several sabbaticals researching at the University of Groningen and at the Free University in Amsterdam and has led 10 Calvin interim classes to the Netherlands.

For more on Aay, visit www.calvin.edu/academic/geology/faculty/aay

Amy Patterson, a Calvin professor of political science, will research in Zambia for six months, beginning in January, 2011. She will be studying how HIV support groups, both Christian and secular, empower their members emotionally, socially and politically.

Patterson first traveled to Zambia in 2007 to research with Calvin student and McGregor Scholar Kyla Vander Hart (After she graduated in 2008, Vander Hart returned to that country to work for the International Justice Mission.)

Political science professor Bill Stevenson said of Patterson: "She is increasingly recognized-and this Fulbright is evidence of it-as an international scholarly authority on the politics of AIDS in Africa."

This February, Patterson won Calvin's first-ever Faculty Advising and Mentoring Award, in part because of the work she has done mentoring students in Calvin's Model UN program. "She's a tremendous young scholar and a great teacher," added Stevenson.

For more on Patterson, visit www.calvin.edu/academic/pols/faculty/patterson

-end-
Received on Wed Apr 28 09:33:05 2010