Two St. Mary’s College of Maryland professors have received Fulbright Scholar grants for research and teaching abroad.
Kenneth Cohen, associate professor of history and coordinator of the Museum Studies program, has been selected for a Fulbright grant for the 2015-16 academic year. Cohen will teach graduate courses in American Studies at Félix Houphoüet Boigny University in Côte D’Ivoire. He will also work with Côte D’Ivoire’s national museum, Musée des Civilisations, to develop online and other programming as the institution recovers from having lost roughly 80% of its collections during a civil war in the country in 2010-11. Cohen also has received support from the Smithsonian Institution and George Mason University’s Center for History and New Media.
“I am honored and excited to have received this award and to have support from numerous institutions as I begin work on a project that I hope can be a model for international partnership,” Cohen said. “Museums have long borrowed objects from each other, but the next step is working together to expand access to the training and technology that will allow anyone on the planet to learn about a distant place through locals’ own take on their unique cultural heritage.” Cohen expects to apply his own experiences to classes at St. Mary’s College when he returns, as he is already working with Associate Professor of Computer Science Alan Jamieson on a new digital humanities course.
Lin Muilenburg, associate professor in the Department of Educational Studies, was awarded a 2014-15 Fulbright grant to teach in Slovenia. The focus of her project, “Transforming Learning with Educational Technologies,” is to help K-12 teachers and teacher educators to create engaging, student-centered instruction that builds 21st century skills.
Speaking about the motivations for her project, Muilenburg cites the “evolving” relationship between technology and education in the modern age,” saying that a “fundamental challenge is providing the education and staff development needed to empower teachers and faculty to adopt innovative instructional practices.” She hopes that her Fulbright work will help students and teachers alike develop a firmer grasp on the technologies influencing education, allowing them to develop skills useful both in and outside the classroom.
Muilenburg, who left for Slovenia in February 2015, is currently teaching undergraduate and graduate-level courses at the Faculty of Education of the University of Ljubljana, where she is also facilitating staff development workshops for in-service educators.