Professors earn Fulbrights to teach abroad

Argentina, Lithuania, the Netherlands and China are the destinations for four KU professors who have won prestigious Fulbright scholarships.

Burdett Loomis

This year, Burdett Loomis, professor of political science; Patrick Suzeau, associate professor of dance; Bill Tuttle, professor of American studies; and Elizabeth A. Schultz, professor emerita of English, received Fulbright awards.

Loomis won a senior scholar award and will be teaching a weeklong seminar in Argentina with a historian from the University of Texas - Dallas. He is the first KU faculty member to be selected to participate in the new Fulbright Senior Specialist program.

Patrick Suzeau

Also a senior scholar, Suzeau will teach dance at the Lithuanian Music Academy in Vilnius. Suzeau, who is an expert in contemporary dance technique and choreography, ballet, East Indian classical dance and Laban Movement Analysis, plans to introduce these elements into his classes in Lithuania. Much of this will be new to the students who are trained in the Russian classical ballet tradition.

Bill Tuttle

Tuttle earned a distinguished chair and will teach a seminar titled "American People in an Era of Social, Political and Cultural Change" at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, Netherlands, as the John Adams Chair of American History. Awards in the Fulbright Distinguished Chairs Program are considered among the most prestigious appointments in the Fulbright Scholar Program.

Schultz, who retired from KU in 2001, received a distinguished lecturer award and will offer the first course on ecocriticism at a Chinese university, the Beijing Foreign Studies University, in February. She also will teach a course on American women writers.

One of the oldest and largest international exchange programs in the world, the Fulbright Scholar Program offers grants for college and university faculty and administrators to lecture and conduct research in 140 countries. Since the program began more than 50 years ago, 275 KU faculty have received Fulbright grants. The Office of International Programs coordinates all of the Fulbright programs at KU.