This week, I am in the office two days and on the road for three.

Tomorrow (Tuesday), I leave for Lincoln, Nebraska, where I will be meeting with faculty and administrators. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is one of our institutional members, and one of the benefits of membership is that we try to be flexible and help them in any way possible. While there, I will be meeting with researchers and staff to discuss the availablity of federal funds for a joint project that we are considering.

I also will give talks to faculty and students as part of their "Research Week" - a several day program where for students present their research and outside speakers talk about the world beyond Lincoln. I will be talking about opportunities available through the Fulbright program, and so I was up until midnight on Saturday working on my powerpoint presentations. I took a Dale Carnegie public speaking course two years ago, and so I tried to remember some of the tricks of the trade so that my talk will excite as well as inform.

The flight leaves at 7:05 am, arriving shortly before lunch. Happily I live just 15 minutes from the airport, and Portland has a small airport. This means that I can get up at 5:30, have breakfast and leave just before 6:00 am and still have no problem getting the flight.

I get back to Maine on Thursday evening, and Friday will be a busy day - interviewing candidates for one or two summer internships at the Academy. We have seven current Fulbrght grantees who would like to come to Maine for the summer as part of their academic training. All are interesting, so it will be a difficult choice.