Meet Our USA Fulbrighters Archive - Page 17 of 29

Martha Weiss

Prof. Martha Weiss is a professor of biology at Georgetown University where she directs the environmental biology major and co-directs the environmental studies program. She received a BA in geological sciences from Harvard University, a PhD in botany from the University of California, Berkeley, and postdoctoral training in insect behavior from the University of Arizona, Tucson. Her research – deriving from a close observation of nature – centers around experimental exploration of questions in insect ecology and plant–animal interactions. Her topics of investigation have included floral color changes as cues for pollinators; learning and memory in butterflies; the retention of memory across metamorphosis; and the indirect ecological consequences of periodical cicada emergences. In her teaching, she prioritizes opportunities for active learning and engagement; she believes that while thoughtful pedagogy is an important foundation for instruction in any subject, it is particularly critical in STEM fields where traditional, memorization-based methods of teaching have been known to discourage participation. Outside of research and teaching, she enjoys hiking and spending time outdoors, botanizing, foraging for edible plants, and working with fibers and textiles.

For her Fulbright-Nehru project, Prof. Weiss is investigating the behavior, movement, and sensory ecology of ant-mimicking arthropods in areas around Bengaluru and Thiruvananthapuram. In one of the prime examples of adaptation by natural selection, a diverse array of insects and spiders exhibit a remarkable resemblance to ants, mimicking them in both morphology and behavior, and thereby gaining protection from predators that actively avoid ants. She is also offering field-based workshops to students at Azim Premji University on plant–insect interactions; besides, she is participating in pedagogical workshops on “ungrading”, a relatively new assessment strategy that moves the focus away from testing and instead puts learning at the center of higher education.

John Portz

Prof. John Portz is a professor of political science at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. His research interests include education policy, federalism, and institutional leadership, and his teaching areas cover urban politics, intergovernmental relations, public policy, and public administration. In one major research project, he joined a team of scholars analyzing the development of civic capacity in support of public education in major U.S. cities. Based on this project, he co-authored City Schools and City Politics: Institutions and Leadership in Pittsburgh, Boston, and St. Louis (University Press of Kansas, 1999). Focusing on leadership, in another co-authored project he worked with a colleague to identify and explore six common practices of leader-managers in the public sector (Leader-Managers in the Public Sector: Managing for Results, M. E. Sharpe, 2010). More recently, he has focused on educational governance and accountability in K-12 education. Of particular interest are variations in how accountability is achieved, depending upon the institutional setting: administrative, market, professional, and political. Each setting offers a different accountability design. In addition, these designs vary across American federalism based upon different perspectives or lenses at the national, state, and local levels. This project led to a recent publication of his, Educational Accountability and American Federalism: Moving Beyond a Test-Based Approach (Routledge, 2023). In addition to his research activities, Prof. Portz has served at Northeastern University as chair of the Political Science Department and director of the University Honors Program. Outside of academia, he has served as an elected member of his home community’s school board and city council.

In his Fulbright-Nehru project, Prof. Portz is combining teaching, advising, and research. This includes giving guest lectures on special topics in American politics and policymaking, providing guest presentations in classes, and advising students on research projects. The political and policy dynamics of federalism in the U.S. and India is of particular interest. The research component of his project is an extension of his recent work on educational accountability, focusing on the dynamics of accountability at the elementary and secondary education levels (up to age 18) in India in comparison to the U.S.

Arpita Joardar

Dr. Arpita Joardar got her PhD in international business from the University of South Carolina. Currently, she is an associate professor of management and the director of the MBA program at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. She has presented her research in national as well as international conferences and received recognitions like the FIU/AIB Best Theory Paper Award and nomination for the Carolyn Dexter Award. Her research has been published in various high-quality peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of International Management, International Business Review, and International Journal of Cross Cultural Management.

Dr. Joardar’s research draws from and integrates theories from multiple disciplines such as organizational behavior, strategy, economics, psychology, and cultural anthropology to examine international business phenomena. More recently, Dr. Joardar has been engaged in researching best practices for teaching in business programs. She draws from her more than 15 years of teaching experience in bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs using multiple teaching modalities for identifying the most effective pedagogical tools for business faculty.

India’s growing demands of entrepreneurs means that it is essential to develop business programs that provide quality training on critical skills to navigate the challenges of a dynamic global business environment. Dr. Joardar is using her Fulbright-Nehru grant to work with the business academic community in India to develop curriculum that is designed for future management professionals interested in global business. In this regard, she is presenting her research and engaging in exchange of ideas with both faculty and students there. Dr. Joardar is also exploring opportunities for future collaboration in India. Besides, she is teaching management topics with international focus for courses on Cross-cultural Management and International Business. She is also helping the faculty in curriculum development and discussing research opportunities for collaboration. Similarly, she is exploring the possibility of mutually beneficial exchange programs between her home institution in the U.S. and her host in India.

Devan Barker

Dr. Devan Barker is currently a professor of history at Brigham Young University (BYU)-Idaho where he teaches courses in world history and philosophy. Dr. Barker received a bachelor’s in Italian and a master’s in organizational behavior from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. His PhD was from the University of Wuerzburg in Germany where he studied intellectual history with an emphasis on the history of educational philosophy. Before pursuing his doctoral work, Dr. Barker was involved in starting and administering several private and charter schools, including a high school completion program in Mexico, a performing and fine arts school in Utah, Utah’s first charter school placed in a multimillion-dollar performing arts facility, and the national flagship school in the United States for Montessori education at the adolescent level. He has also worked in the corporate world for companies like Novell and PepsiCo.

Dr. Barker is a founding director of the Office of Instructional Development at BYU-Idaho where he oversaw faculty development and training programs for a decade while the school transitioned from a two-year college to a four-year university and tripled in size, adding over 700 new faculty. He continues his involvement in university pedagogy as a faculty fellow for the development office.

Over the course of his career, Dr. Barker has taught middle school, high school, undergraduate, and master’s students, has mentored several doctoral candidates, and has consulted with numerous other universities. He has presented workshops on a wide array of topics relevant to faculty development and has published articles and chapters on intellectual history as well as on university pedagogy.

The Fulbright-Nehru project involves partnering with an expert in the literature around university pedagogy and organizational change with a leading Indian university promoting educational reform. The goal is to support a university-wide culture shift from education-for-certification to knowledge production pursued as an end in the tradition of liberal arts institutions.

Audra Anjum

Dr. Audra Anjum is an instructional designer at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. She earned a PhD in instructional technology and an MA in applied linguistics, both from Ohio University, and a BA in English from Wilmington College, Ohio. Dr. Anjum’s teaching experience includes teaching undergraduate courses at Ohio University and at institutions abroad. She has taught in many different teaching modalities across different types of learners. Over the past decade of her professional practice, Dr. Anjum’s work as an instructional designer has mainly centered around faculty development and course design. She has delivered several faculty development workshops both in the United States and India, as well as collaborated with over one 100 faculty members and subject-matter experts on all or parts of hundreds of courses, seminars, and other transformative learning experiences.

Dr. Anjum’s primary research focus is on investigating the individual differences and factors that influence instructors’ decisions to use technology in university settings, wherein the integration of enterprise-wide solutions is implicitly mandatory. The impetus to pursue this line of research mainly stems from her efforts to reframe current approaches to faculty support initiatives with greater empathy, by leveraging differences among instructors’ varying coping responses to workplace stressors (like the use of technology) rather than through instructional best practices and institutional mandates. She is also involved in capacity-building efforts for promoting teacher training at Ohio University wherein she frequently collaborates with both pre- and in-service instructors across a wide range of disciplines who are interested in contributing to the scholarship of teaching and learning within their areas of expertise.

Dr. Anjum’s Fulbright-Nehru project is facilitating a capacity-building program for instructional design and faculty development at the JSS Medical College in Mysuru, India. She is carrying this out in collaboration with the faculty and administration. She is also teaching classes and opening up a series of professional development opportunities to enhance teaching practices and student engagement, with specific focus on topics such as technology use, accessibility and inclusivity, active learning strategies, and multimedia development.

Julia Wintner

Ms. Julia Wintner is the director of the Art Gallery at Eastern Connecticut State University (ECSU) in Willimantic, Connecticut, where she curates exhibitions, manages the visiting artist program, and teaches courses in curatorial practice. Previously, she was the director of the University of Central Florida Art Gallery, Orlando, where she developed a solid record of multidisciplinary curating and promoted the fine arts as a central and highly visible part of academic and cocurricular campus life. She graduated from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, New York. Her academic studies are supported by a two decades-long immigrant journey through four continents, beginning in Russia, continuing through South East Asia and the South Pacific, and concluding in North America. Her immigrant journey inspired her interest in diasporic art making. In her curatorial work, Ms. Wintner highlights the artist’s role as a cultural ambassador of the divided contemporary world; she also focuses on the development of a constituent-based curatorial model. Her research has been presented and featured in academic conferences and publications.

Ms. Wintner’s Fulbright-Nehru project is researching contemporary curatorial practices in India and how the curator’s role there has evolved over the past 30 years. She is instructing Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology students in their curatorial MA program regarding contemporary curatorial practices within U.S. cultural institutions. Her award will result in exhibitions showcasing contemporary Indian artists, curatorial exchanges, and joint classroom sessions between her home and host institutions. The project will also contribute to creating a cohort of curators who will be intermediaries between countries, cultural policies, and diverse audiences.

William Westerman

Dr. William Westerman is a folklorist, applied anthropologist, and former museum director with interests in refugees, human rights, social justice, and indigenous and immigrant communities. He has an AB from Harvard University and an AM and PhD in folklore and folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work at New Jersey City University, where he is also the coordinator of a program in ethnic and immigration studies. Previously, he was a lecturer in Princeton University’s writing program; he has also taught in a master’s program in cultural sustainability at Goucher College and the Macaulay Honors College of the City University of New York. Besides, he is a faculty member in the New Jersey Scholars Program for exceptional high school students. He has served as the director of the National Cambodian American Heritage Museum and Killing Fields Memorial in Chicago and at the Drake House Museum of Plainfield. Other experiences include research and curating at the Philadelphia Folklore Project and the National Museum of American Jewish History.

Dr. Westerman’s teaching and research interests encompass immigration, with a special focus on refugee rights and the role of arts and culture in immigrant and refugee communities; ethnographic museums of immigration; indigenous rights and language sustainability; folklore and the sociology of culture; applied anthropology and social justice; and visual sociology. He is also the editor of Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy. His publications include articles on applied folklore, pedagogy, museum studies, and Cambodian-American arts and culture. He is the co-author of The Giant Never Wins: Lakhon Bassac (Cambodian Folk Opera) in Philadelphia (Philadelphia Folklore Project, 1994). He has also curated numerous exhibitions, most notably “Fly to Freedom: The Paper Art of the Golden Venture Refugees” at the Museum of Chinese in America, in New York, as well as on its national tour.

In his Fulbright-Nehru fellowship, Dr. Westerman is affiliated with the Department of Cultural and Creative Studies at North-Eastern Hill University in Shillong, Meghalaya. As a part of his project, he is delivering lectures on folklore and the sociology of culture and on the practical application of folkloristics in social work. Besides, he is mentoring folklore students in their master’s and doctoral programs. He is also undertaking collaborative ethnographic research with native scholars, particularly in the areas of indigenous museums, oral literatures, folklore curriculum, and language preservation.

Dharmendra Saraswat

Dr. Dharmendra Saraswat is an associate professor in the Agricultural and Biological Engineering (ABE) Department at Purdue University. He received a bachelor’s degree in agricultural engineering from Sam Higginbottom Institute of Agriculture, Technology and Sciences (SHUATS); a master’s degree in agricultural engineering from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi, and a PhD in food, agricultural, and biological engineering from The Ohio State University.

Before coming to Purdue, Dr. Saraswat was a faculty member at the University of Arkansas, a scientist at the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, New Delhi, and an assistant professor at Chandra Shekhar Azad University of Agriculture & Technology, Kanpur.

Dr. Saraswat conducts research in information technology for agriculture. He has been pursuing two areas of emphasis within agriculture: watershed modeling; and digital agriculture. He applies engineering and science principles to measure, model, and develop digital solutions. Dr. Saraswat’s research demonstrates the application of GIS, remote sensing, and open-source software for creating new technologies, decision-support tools, and data sets to manage the environment and agricultural production systems.

Dr. Saraswat’s overall research and extension efforts have been recognized on a sustained basis. He has received several awards, including the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Award (2023), Excellence in Multistate Research Team Award from USDA-NIFA for the S1069 project (2022), Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award from Purdue ABE (2022), Outstanding Educator Award by SHUATS (2021), the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers’ (ASABE) ITSC Best Paper Award (2019), ASABE Standards Award (2018), ASABE Educational Aids Blue Ribbon Award (2017, 2015, and 2013), the American Society of Horticultural Sciences’ Outstanding App Award (2016), Southern Region-American Society of Horticultural Sciences’ Blue Ribbon Extension Communication Award (2016 and 2012), the Fellow of Indian Society of Agricultural Engineers (2014), John W. White Outstanding Extension State Faculty Award by the University of Arkansas (2014), and Excellence in Remote Sensing and Precision Agriculture Award from the National Association of County Agricultural Agents (2013).

Dr. Saraswat’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is focusing on applying deep learning methods to identify and study the spread pattern of bacterial blight in rice and develop a conceptual modeling framework for creating an early warning system. Besides, Dr. Saraswat is collaborating with colleagues at IARI to share experiences with curriculum design and classroom delivery for spatial data science courses to augment the existing curriculum for developing students’ analytical, problem-solving, computational, and decision-making skills and abilities.

Shalini Puri

Prof. Shalini Puri has a PhD from Cornell University and is a professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research interests span postcolonial, Caribbean, gender, and memory studies; indentureship, slavery, and incarceration; environmental humanities; and social movements. She is especially interested in interdisciplinary and fieldwork-based humanities methods that explore the intersection of the arts, everyday life, and social justice.

Prof. Puri co-founded the Pitt Prison Education Project. She is the author of The Grenada Revolution in the Caribbean Present: Operation Urgent Memory and the award-winning The Caribbean Postcolonial: Social Equality, Post-Nationalism, and Cultural Hybridity. She has co-edited Theorizing Fieldwork in the Humanities: Methods, Reflections, and Approaches to the Global South and several other books. She also edits Palgrave Macmillan’s New Caribbean Studies series. Currently, she is working on a book titled “Poetics for Freshwater Justice”.

As part of her Fulbright-Nehru project, Prof. Puri is collaborating with scholars at Ashoka University to explore how a comparative study of the Caribbean and India can reframe postcolonial studies and build enduring mechanisms for south–south exchange. The specific foci of the collaboration is research, teaching, advising, and capacity building to facilitate a cross-regional study of migration, environmentalisms, and water justice using the lens of literature and interdisciplinary humanities.

Sulapha Peethamparan

Dr. Sulapha Peethamparan is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Clarkson University, New York. She received her PhD from Purdue University, MEng from the National University of Singapore, MS from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, and BTech from Mahatma Gandhi University, all in civil engineering. Prior to joining Clarkson University, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at Princeton University. Dr. Peethamparan has over 15 years of research and teaching experience in cement, aggregate, and concrete materials. Her recent work involves various aspects of the development of alternative or low carbon concrete such as high-volume fly ash concrete, bio-cement concrete, alkali-activated or geopolymers concrete. The primary objectives of these studies are to determine the fresh, hardened, and durability performances of such low carbon concrete and their underlying physiochemical mechanisms. Her expertise also includes CO2/NOx sequestration technologies in concrete. Dr. Peethamparan’s research work has been supported by various agencies that include the National Science Foundation, the Federal Highway Administration, New York State Energy Research and Department Authority, and New York State Pollution Prevention Institute. She has authored/co-authored over 100 technical papers and reports. Dr. Peethamparan is also an associate editor of the ASCE Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering, chair of the Concrete Research Counsel at the American Concrete Institute, and fellow of the American Concrete Institute. She is a recipient of the 2010 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development award.

The environmental impact of CO2 emission from portland cement production and the role of the concrete industry in global warming sparked the need to develop more sustainable, alternative low carbon concrete for construction. India, the second-largest cement producer in the world, reported an emission of over 250 million metric tons of CO2 in the year 2020. The main objective of this Fulbright research is to explore the viability of producing low carbon portland cement-free geopolymer concrete using locally available industrial byproducts in India and solid alkali activators through the one-part alkali activation technology. In her project, Dr. Peethamparan is also developing new course material covering several alternative cement technologies.