Fulbright Academy

2009-12-02T10:29:00.001-08:00

Our blog was inactive for nearly three years ... Time to get it going again.

If you want to know about our activities and achievements, please look at the About Us section of the FAST website (www.FulbrightAcademy.org). Our annual reports are posted there.

Brief Summary of Major Events:

Specialist Conference on Information Technology in North Africa in February 2007
Second Annual Conference - Panama in March 2007
Third Annual Conference - Boston in February 2008
Specialist Conference on Nursing Education in the Middle East - Qatar in April 2008
Specialist Conference on the Future of Cities - Singapore in October 2008
Fourth Annual Conference - Macedonia in March 2009
Tour and Program at the World Science Forum - Hungary in November 2009

2007-01-08T09:52:00.000-08:00

Our temporary office in Panama is all set up. Phone and internet are go. Call the office in Maine, and the phone rings here, and if I'm not in the office, your message can be converted to an email and sent to me where ever I may be.

This is going to be a very busy few weeks - with preparations for our two upcoming meetings. Instead of having one large conference this winter, we are having two meetings - a focused workshop on digital libraries in Morocco for about 75 people and the annual conference in Panama for about 150 people.

The Morocco workshop is nearly settled. The attendees are registered, papers have been submitted papers, we know the speakers, the sponsors are set, and our partners in Morocco have organized the food and hotel.

The Panama conference still has some work to be done. I am meeting with the hotels on Wednesday to review the status for food, accommodations and meeting rooms. Registrations are coming in, and we are filling the panels with interesting speakers and the poster session with some fascinating research.

2007-01-01T19:40:00.000-08:00

It is a new year - today I was working on the 4th Annual Report of the Fulbright Academy and also reviewed the reports from previous years. Our income has risen steadily - from under $20,000/year in 2003 and 2004 to nearly $100,000 in 2006, with over $50,000 in cash and in-kind services already committed for 2007.

We are hoping to double our income again in 2007, with new programs and initiatives. Some of these programs will be the result of work and research conducted by our 2006 fellows/interns. We supported seven young Fulbrighters and scientists, and some of their work is providing benefits to FAST. For example, one Fulbrighter in the field of communication was seeking a film project and produced a DVD about our 2006 conference. Another wanted to connect with other Fulbrighters in her field, and by working with FAST, we were able to quickly establish a network that benefited her and us. We are very grateful to Booz Allen Hamilton for sponsoring the Fall fellows/interns.

In looking at the old annual reports, I remembered some of the trips from these past four years, such as the International Fulbright Conference in Athens, Greece late in 2004 - at the time of my 40th birthday. That meeting provided the personal contacts that launched a series of international programs. Our Berlin conference earlier this year, the Morocco workshop later this month and the Panama conference in March all grew out of contacts that were made in Athens.

I am especially grateful to certain Fulbright families in Washington, Baltimore, Cold Spring Harbor Winston-Salem, St. Louis, Lincoln, Paris, Berlin, Leuven, Rabat and Panama City. These Fulbrighters hosted me in their homes and communities while I was visiting their fine cities during the past two years. I am looking forward to establishing contacts with other members and colleagues in the 12 months to come.

2006-12-26T18:35:00.000-08:00

It was a great Christmas - with emails of personal greetings from Fulbright alumni in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe and the US. One came from a Muslim colleague in North Africa - "I was so busy with our Lamb sacrifice Aïd preparation (this coming Saturday) that I completely forgot to wish you happy Christmas and a prosperous new 2007 year."

The best email, however, came two days before Christmas - notification that the Academy had been awarded a $10,000 grant to support participation by about fifteen Fulbrighters in Latin America - each person will get up to $600 to pay for their registration and their accommodations in Panama City. The Fulbright Commission in Mexico has nominated six people, and some Fulbrighters from other countries have been identified as well. A call for nominations is going out again next week. We have been seeking funds from other sources as well, and are hopeful that we will be successful in matching the $10,000 from SENACYT.

The other good news is that the Academy will have an office at ANCON (la Asociación Nacional para la Conservación de la Naturaleza - the National Association for the Conservation of Nature) during the time that we are based in Panama. Moving day is Thursday, January 4, and all systems are go.

2006-12-17T15:00:00.000-08:00

Dozens of poeple have registered or submitted abstracts for the Panama conference. It is an international group, with experience in places such as Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, El Salvador, Germany, India, Iran, Israel, Jordan, Morocco, Nicaragua, Palestine, Panama, Pakistan, Singapore, Ukraine, UK and USA.

On Friday, I compared with list with the attendee list from our 2006 conference in Berlin. 140 people were registered to attend that meeting -- and 19 of them are expected to come to the 2007 conference in Panama. I am quite pleased with that statistic, given that the meeting is (1) in a different continent and (2) that many of the 2006 participants were student grantees.

In addition to registrations, we are getting confirmations on the tours. The three-hour tours are on Friday and Saturday morning. One group will be going to Culebra, an environnmental education center on the waterfront managed by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Another group will be going to the Pamana Canal. Two or three additional tours are still in the development stages - the exact number of tours will depend on the number of conference participants.

2006-12-12T09:49:00.000-08:00

Here is a picture from the window of the apartment that we have rented in Panama City. We are on the 9th floor. Palm trees, parks, hills in the distance.

2006-12-12T09:14:00.000-08:00

I took some time off from Blogging on this account - three months.

Many developments at the Fulbright Academy - new institutional members, travel and programs in Washington and Winston-Salem, updates on our workshops and conference.

I am particularly excited about the upcoming workshop in Morocco on Digital Libraries and their application to science, education and cultural preservation. We will have around 75 people from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, Egypt, Canada, France, the UK and the United States. US participants coming from the Library of Congress, the Getty Museum, the State Department, Harvard, Tufts, the University of Chicago, etc. It will also be our first multi-lingual program with simultaneous translation. I am very grateful to the Moroccan Fulbrighters who approached us and asked us to help facilitate the meeting and manage the US delegation.

The preparations for the Conference in Panama are going well - that is about 11 weeks away, and we have a good set of speakers and presenters. We are still working on sponsors. There will be 100-150 participants - maybe more - it depends on how many Panamanians want to attend. The upper limit will be 150. I found a fun video this morning - time-lapse photography showing boats going through the Panama Canal - I put it on our homepage.

My wife and two of the kids fly to Panama in three weeks, I follow two days later with our oldest. We will be in Panama for 12 weeks - organizing the conference and developing stronger relationships with Latin American institutions. Our apartment is in the center of the city, near the University, so it will be a big change from our suburban existence here in South Portland, Maine. Climate. Language. Culture. Environment.

2006-09-13T18:57:00.000-07:00

Some weeks are very slow - nothing seems to progress. In others, there is immediate movement. The first three days of this week make it a week in the second category.

Message on Monday morning when I turn on the computer: a $200 donation from a prospective board member. Earlier this year, we announced in the newsletter that we were seeking candidates to serve on the board of directors. In the past 18 months, we added two new members and one resigned. Now we need some more new blood - ideally three this year and three next year. We started with over a dozen candidates, and so it will quite difficult to decide on the three - criteria include professional background, academic background, nationality, past experience on non-profit boards, gaps in our current capabilities, and willingness to serve.

Those who don't get on this year might serve in other capacities - such as on our newly created Advisory Board or on a study committee. Unfortunately we are still a small organization, and we can only manage a limited number of projects and volunteers - even volunteers need some management and oversight.

The other nice development has been progress with the Panama Conference. We seem to be all set with our two venues: El Panama and the Gamboa Resort. Our opening speakers are Sir Federico Humbert (Panama's Ambassador to the US) and Sir Harold Kroto (Nobel Prize in Chemistry). The Fulbright Commission in Mexico has recommended five possible speakers or participants. A leader in the Fulbright Alumni Group in Morocco faxed his proposed topic for a poster in the poster session. The Fulbright Alumni Group for Palestine seems to have identified funding to send 3-4 people. And we received a response from one of the alumni groups in Asia which hopes to host our March 2008 conference - they also plan on sending a 3-4 person delegation to Panama.

Institutional memberships are also growing. The newest is Sixth Star Marketing & Entertainment. They provide speakers to tourist & cruise ships around the world. Many Fulbrighters are qualified speakers, and some have work schedules that would allow them to take a 1-2 week cruise and give lectures to the guests on their specialty - be it natural science, social history, or any number of other topics. We are hoping that their involvement will help some of our indivual members, and at the same time help this institutional member.

The news from last week relates to an upcoming trip to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I will be at Salem College and Wake Forest University - we will be talking about the Fulbright program, the Fulbright Academy, and opportunities for individuals and institutions to be involved in both. For me, however, it will also be a personal journey. My grandmother's parents moved to WS in the 1890s - brought there to work for Mr. Reynolds of Reynolds Tobacco Company. My grandmother grew up there, graduated from Salem College in 1917. Two of her brothers and her parents are buried in Winston-Salem, so I will visit their graves.

So it has been a busy few days.

2006-08-25T10:29:00.000-07:00

It was a wonderful week in the office after a wonderful week of not being in the office.

Last week was vacation in Nova Scotia - camping, kayaking, swimming, etc. From the tops of the cliffs on Cape Breton you can look down onto the ocean and see the pilot whales feeding offshre. Many bald eagles. Deer and moose. The weather was perfect - just two nights of rain - so that may have biased our view of the province.

The news this week is that Thomson Scientific has agreed to be an instutional member and a sponsor of the upcoming workshop in Morocco. Some of their sponsorship funds will be used to bring additional experts from neighboring countries so that we can have a more comprehensive discussion of regional issues relating to digital libraries and access to electronic information.

The other news is that Booz Allen Hamilton has agreed to be a sponsor of our fall internship program. We had three interns this summer - from Belgium, Peru & the US. The Booz Allen contribution will fund one or two interns, and if we can match it with a second donation, then the internship program will really take off. It is an internet-based program - the interns do not need to be based at our office in Maine - and the funds may even help young Fulbrighters as they transition back to their home country.

The monthly newsletter went out this week, and it included our offer to give free memberships to Fulbrighters from the Middle East and North Africa. The response has been quite good, and we now have around 80 countries represented in the Academy through the country of their residence (35+ countries) or the country of their Fulbright experience (65+ countries). (The numbers don't add up to 80 because some countries appear on both lists). My goal is to have over 100 countires represented by the end of this year.

The other good news of the week is that the US State Department has posted an updated list of Fulbright alumni organizations, and the Fulbright Academy is included on the list. The State Department is involved because they oversee and partially fund the Fulbright program. The list can be downloaded from the Alumni.State.Gov website.

2006-08-10T18:29:00.000-07:00

I will be on vacation next week (August 12-19) - camping with my wife and kids in Cape Breton Highlands National Park in Nova Scotia (Canada). Yarmouth, Nova Scotia is a 5.5 hour ferry ride from Portland, Maine. Cape Breton is an eight hour drive from Yarmouth.

If you send an email or call the office next week, I will not respond as there is no access to the internet in the park. A whole week with no computer !!

2006-08-07T12:42:00.000-07:00

While many organizations slow down in the summer, we had a very busy July.

First, there was paperwork for the National Science Foundation - they are awarding $45,000 to the Academy to facilitate participation by US experts in a workshop, to be held on January 25-28 in Morocco. It is an international workshop on digital information communication, with a focus on implementing a Maghreb Digital Library for Education, Science & Culture. The goal is to have around 50 participants, from Morocco, Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, and Mauritania, plus 15-20 from the United States. Our partners to date are UNESCO, the Moroccan Ministry of Higher Education, R&D Maroc, and others. We also have been in conversation with private sector sponsors.

Second, we have been looking for program leaders and speakers for the March 2007 conference in Panama. One of our interns in New York City has been identifying corporate leaders who were also Fulbright scholars, and I have been making calls to them. We also have been in communication with ambassadors and government leaders.

Third, the Chair of our Joint Committee on Clinical Research Ethics has been traveling this summer. In May Dr. Gionis was at a UNESCO Consultation in Bangkok on codes of ethics, in July he was at a UNESCO Consultation in Seoul on teaching ethics, and this week he is in Beijing at the 8th World Congress of Bioethics. At each of the meetings, he has been addressing one of our areas of interest - a better understanding of the existing guidelines for international research and assuring adequate oversight and enforcement of these guidelines.

Fourth, we have been laying the foundation for continued work on a project that was originally sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation - collecting stories from Fulbright scientists on how the Fulbright program influenced them and their work. Over the past year, we have collected some stories on our website and created a directory of other story repositories (primarily Fulbright Commissions). The work led to two new initiatives. The first will be a series of documentaries made at and about Fulbright meetings. The first documentary was made by Mrs. Fulbright (Senator Fulbright’s widow), and is about the Senator's life and his work, and the second documentary was made by us and is about the Academy's conference in Berlin. The second initiative is a multi-volume collection of essays by Fulbright scholars about their Fulbright experiences. The first volume came out this summer and is by foreign Fulbrighters in the US. Several other volumes are under production - I am co-editing one about Fulbright exchanges with Latin America. In the meantime, we continue to collect stories on the website.

Lastly, we have been working to increase our membership. About half of our current members were up for renewal, and so we sent out dues notices at the end of July (the other half is notified in January). Because of our workshop in Morocco and other activities in North Africa and the Middle East, we have been able to offer free memberships to Fulbrighters in that region. While the US restored full diplimatic relations with Libya in May, many say that our diplomatic relations with other countries in the region have declined this year. This means that there is increased value for the type of person-to-person relationships created by the Fulbright program.

2006-07-07T19:20:00.000-07:00

This was a great week. After a very rainy and dreary June, the weather was wonderful and I was able to go for walks on the beach during my lunch hour. The neighborhood got together on Tuesday afternoon for a 4th of July party, and it was followed by a long fireworks display put on by the City of Portland.

This week also was great because of good developments at the Fulbright Academy. A Nobel Prize winner has tentatively accepted our invitation to speak at our March Conference in Panama, and some of the national Fulbright organizations are confirming their involvement as well. Planning for several forums and workshops is moving forward as well, and we identified another foundation that may be interested in supporting our work.

Among the new members who joined this week, we had a professor emeritus of anthropology and the president of an IT consulting firm who had studied business management in Jordan on his Fulbright experience. Interesting people doing interesting work.

We also had an architect in Vienna and an architect in Guatemala City. Architecture is one of those disciplines that straddles the boundary -- is it art or is it science? Because of the math and the engineering, I think of it as a science.

I love the serendipity in this job - the connections that I am able to make among Fulbrighters around the world. On the same day that the architect in Guatemala faxed his membership form, I also received an email from a member saying that I shouldn't mail anything to her home in Ohio because she had just arrived in Guatemala for a month of work and vacation. I suggested that they should get together.... I wonder if they will?

2006-06-28T07:42:00.000-07:00

This week marks the end of the second quarter of our fiscal year.

This week also marks the halfway point in the Academy's $500,000 3-year development plan. In order to grow the Academy, we are seeking $500,000 of income from different sources between January 2005 and December 2007. If commitments from funders and donors are included, we have are at about $220,000 -- we raised 44% of the goal !!!

We have many donors who are giving under $100, and we are very grateful for their support. At the same time, we still need a few major grants or donations -- the ones that will have a big impact on the bottom line. While it would be wonderful to have 1,000 additional members each paying $60, it also would be wonderful to have a $60,000 grant from a single source.

Our newest corporate partner is SalesForce.com, an internet based provider of member-management software and customer relationship management (CRB) software.

2006-06-14T16:55:00.000-07:00

I was down in Washington, DC, last week for two days - I flew down on Thursday morning from Boston ($69) and gave a brown-bag lunch at the National Science Foundation. We had about 20 attendees, primarily staff from the International Programs Office and the Division of Elementary, Secondary, & Informal Education Program (ESIE, pronounced easy).

As Fulbright scholars, we have an obvious link with the NSF international office. ESIE is relevant because of the informal education component - informal education refers to projects that develop and implement informal learning experiences designed to increase interest, engagement, and understanding of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by individuals of all ages and backgrounds. They also fund projects that communicate NSF-funded research to public audiences.

Then in the afternoon, I had four meetings: with the director for NSF's program to enhance minority participation in the sciences, the director of the Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program, the new president of the National Capital Area Chapter of the Fulbright Association, and the new alumni coordinator at AmidEast, which administers student Fulbighters from the Middle East. In the evening, there was a reception with additional conversations at the National Geographic Society, hosted by the European Commission - they are building a network of European scientists living in the US, with the goal of luring some of them back to Europe.

Each of these meetings led to new ideas - I am glad we are not based in Washington; otherwise I would always be chasing new leads and not getting projects to completion. On the other hand, it was very nice to leave Washington on Friday morning with verbal promises of over $25,000 to fund projects. (The paperwork has not been finalized, so I can't formally say what the project is or who it is coming from.)

The other nice thing from this week is that we selected the dates for our March 2007 conference in Panama City: March 1-4 (Thurs-Sun). We will be at the El Panama Hotel, a little oasis in the center of the city. When I visited the hotel last month, they were hosting a regional meeting on the national parks and protected areas. That was an unexpected pleasure, because in the 1990's I worked for World Wildlife Fund and IUCN-the World Conservation Union, and my first trip to Latin America was to attend the IVth World Parks Congress in Caracas in 1992.

On the personal side, today was the last day of school for our kids - in the fall they will be in 3rd and 5th grade. As in previous years, we celebrated with a picnic on the beach with a dozen other school families.

2006-06-01T18:18:00.000-07:00

The month of May flew past - I was hoping to put a posting up once a week. That obviously did not happen.

The Board of Directors meets once a month via conference call. The June meeting is tomorrow. In preparation for each meeting, I send out a 5-7 page agenda, with information about our programs, our plans, the finances, etc. This makes it easier for us to focus on a few important issues - they have already seen all of the general information. Some board members have been involved for three years, others are newer. We also get together at least once a year for a day-long retreat.

Topics for tomorrow's board meeting are (1) interns; (2) meetings; and (3) volunteers.

(1) As noted in the April 14 Blog, we have several interns with the Academy this summer. They are assisting the Chairs of our existing Study Committees and also may help establish new ones. They also will help with outreach to partners and institutional members. Only one will be based in Maine - her first day was today. The others are based in various cities around the US. (When we select the next group of interns this Fall, I hope to add some based in other countries). The topic for the board is who will supply the funds to pay their stipends - we need one or two sponsors. Some of the interns are already covered, but I am short several thousand dollars.

(2) The May 4 Blog mentions my trip to Panama. The visit was a success, and yesterday we formally announced that Panama will be the site for our March 2007 Conference. We had 140 registered attendees for the March 2006 Conference in Berlin, and we are hoping to double that number in Panama. The 3.5-day conference will have panels and discussions on topics such as ecology, sustainable economic development, chemistry, education, engineering, geography, medicine, and digital learning. Alumni from the region and around the world are involved in the planning. As with the interns (above), sponsors will play a key role in making the program a success - through cash contributions so that we can subsidize participation from low-income Fulbrighters and through in-kind contributions so that we do not need to pay for certain services. Work begins in earnest this month.

(3) In addition to announcing the conference, yesterday's newsletter also included a call for volunteers to advise the Academy and to assist with committees and boards. Within 24 hours, we already had over 40 new volunteers on the roster. Aneta, the new intern at the office, will be taking the lead on contacting them and helping determine how they can best serve the Academy and its members.

I am always impressed by my fellow Fulbrighters - when you ask them to serve, the answer the calling. I am looking forward to getting to know them.

2006-05-04T06:07:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Panama. I am here - where North and South America connect - for four full days of meetings and tours, and a brief drop-in at the Meso American Protected Area Congress. My first trip to Latin America was in 1992 for the IVth World Parks Congress, so I was hoping to see a familiar face.

Panama City is just 3.5 hours by air from Atlanta, Georgia, and they use dollars as their currency, so it is an easy trip - no worse than any other domestic flight with one stop-over. The view from the window was wonderful, flying down the length of Florida, then over Cuba and the Caribbean. From 35,000 feet, you look down and see the development along the coasts, the mangroves, the beaches and underwater shoals. I had looked at the satellite photos of the region on Google Earth before the flight, so I knew what to expect.

Upon arrival, Panama City was a blaze of light - it was a night landing. Over one million inhabitants and dozens of sky-scrapers. Panama City is the only country in the region where the capital city is on the coast, so waterfront property sells at a premium. The big news this week is that Donald Trump will is investing $220 million on the construction of a 65 story hotel/condominium complex on the water. (The city is on the Pacific Ocean side of the country, at the outlet of the Panama Canal). Away from the water, an apartment in a new building sells for $120-$180,000.

While northern tourists might go to the region for eco-tourism, the locals (people from neighboring countries) go to Panama to shop. The prices are stable (in dollars) and low (because of low taxes). Colon, the city on the Atlantic side of the Canal, has the second largest free trade zone in the world (after Hong Kong).

The view of the ocean is very crowded with ships. About 14,000 ships representing 5 percent of the world's trade pass through the canal each year. The post hurricane reconstruction efforts in the Caribbean region (including the US Gulf Coast) means a greater than usual demand for goods - which means a greater than usual demand for ships to pass though the canal. The Canal is considering a $5-6 billion expansion, including new locks that would be 40 percent longer and 50 percent wider than the current ones on the 50-mile canal. This would double the canal's capacity to 660 tons of cargo each year.

2006-04-19T08:55:00.000-07:00

Many of our members work in academic institutions, and so this is a busy time of the year for them. Reading term papers, preparing for exams, advising students about their options for the future.

It is also a busy time of year for the Fulbright Exchange Program. The application process begins in the spring, and the completed applications are due in the late summer or fall for travel the following fall. So right now the program is starting to look for candidates who will go overseas in the 2007-08 academic year.

A completed Fulbright application would include letters of recommendation and a high quality project proposal. High quality means that the candidate must demonstrate why their project is great, why it needs to be done in a particular country, and why they have the right personal and professional qualifications to be a "Fulbrighter."

While the Fulbright Academy of Science & Technology is not involved in the recruiting, selection or management of Fulbright grants, many students and faculty members contact us with questions. That is what makes us busy, and because we work with alumni of the program, we have a strong interest in having the best people in the applicant pool.

We also are busy because the current crop of student Fulbright grantees are nearing the end of their grant period. Many of them are looking for jobs - summer jobs to do before going to graduate school or permanent jobs. One of our goals for the future is to help with this transition. That will be done by increasing the size and scope of the Academy's network of corporate, governmental, non-profit and individual members.

Nearly 6,000 new grants are awarded each year - about half of them are in science and technology-related disciplines. Many are working at institutions and have local hosts who are critical to the success of their Fulbright experience (in many fields it is hard to do research without access to a lab or equipment). This means that the Academy also has the challenge of keeping track of people as they move from job to job.

If you are a Fulbrighter, please go to our webpage and enter your current contact information in our database. www.FulbrightAcademy.org

2006-04-14T07:41:00.000-07:00

This has been an extremely busy week.

We hired three people to work on different projects. The first two are current Fulbright grantees to the United States, and they will be at the Fulbright Academy in Maine for three months this summer. The third will work for a month on one of our projects based at Indiana University-Bloomington.

The first has two law degrees – from the University of Wroclaw, Poland and from the University of Berne, Switzerland. For the past year, she has been at the European Legal Study Center at Columbia University, examining patent protection for inventions in the field of industrial biotechnology, particularly related to bio-fuel. At the Academy, she will be involved in activities relating to intellectual property, technology transfer, and energy issues.
The second earned a Master of Law degree from Ghent University. As part of her Fulbright in the US, she has been an intern at the United Nations in New York, conducting research on global development and peacekeeping issues. Some of the work has been with the UN Delegation from Fiji, and because they have a very small delegation, she has been able to attend some interesting high-level meetings. At the Academy, she will be working on some of our international projects.

The third is graduating from Indiana University-Bloomington. FAST is part of a three-year $500,000 project based in Bloomington and funded by the National Science Foundation. Our portion of the project is to help educate the public on the benefits of bacteria - that bacteria are in and around us every day, and so anti-bacterial products are not necessary. One of the principal investigators is at IU, and we needed a talented local person to help out with some background research this summer.

The hiring process for the summer interns started with an internet posting to a listserv used primarily by current Fulbright grantees. We had seven candidates based at universities in Ohio, Texas, Florida, and New York. It was a strong pool, so we conducted two rounds of telephone interviews. While we could not have them all come to Maine as interns, all of the candidates were given complimentary memberships in the Academy, and several expressed an interest in working on projects from their home base, where ever that may be.

My only problem now is that I do not yet have all of the funds in place to pay for their housing and their stipends. So seeking individual or corporate sponsors has risen to the top of my to-do list.

On the more personal side, I had a very interesting afternoon on Wednesday - I volunteered to be a participant in a research study of cognitive, perceptual and biological functioning and physical features in families. It is a long-term study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). As a participant in the study, I got to take the famous Rorschach Ink-blot Test (what do you see in this amorphous blob). There also was a multiple choice questionnaire, a computer-based test to examine the speed of my thought processing, and an interview that followed the standard psychology evaluation methodology. I could not do a second computer-based test which measures eye movement - the equipment is in Greece getting repaired - so I have to go back in a month or two.

My participation was quite relevant to FAST - we received funding earlier this year to participate in an international research project on clinical research ethics. What are the appropriate guidelines that scientists should use when conducting research on human subjects? The consent form for my participation in the study at McLean Hospital was nine pages long, and then there was another eight page notice on how the information collected may be used or disclosed.

These forms bring up many interesting legal and policy questions, starting with educational background. Would a high-school dropout understand such forms, as well as the benefits and risks of participating in a study? (There are no particular downsides to this study, but other studies can damage your physical or mental health). If this was an international project with researchers from the US, Europe and Africa, whose informed consent guidelines would be used? In countries where husbands and wives do not have equal rights, could a wife give consent to participate herself or consent to her child's involvement in a scientific study?

You can learn more about the Fulbright Academy's project at www.ClinicalResearchEthics.com.

2006-04-06T05:31:00.000-07:00

My trip to the University of Nebraska at Lincoln (UNL) has been a great success. On the flight from Chicago, I sat with a very successful salesman of industrial boilers. Since part of my job is sales (selling FAST to potential members, partners and donors), I asked for the secret of his success. It is asking the right questions and then listening to understand their interests and needs. There are many reasons why a company may want a new boiler (legal regulations, public image, energy efficiency, safety, company growth), and you need to present the advantages of your boiler in their terms.

I thought about this during my two days of meetings with deans and faculty at UNL. As a new organzation, the Fulbright Academy can go in many directions - and so I need to balance our vision with the needs and interests of our members. UNL has nearly 22,000 students, and so there are many different avenues for collaboration between our organization and members and their factulty and students. They have a strong Office of International Affairs, and every year several students get a Fulbright.

Some memories.
As part of their branding effort, the University has been giving out lapel pins that are a large red "N" Everywhere you go, you see the N.
It has a great collection of outdoor sculptures and also a nice art gallery. In the permanent collection, they have an exhibit of Marsen Hartley, who apparently was a leading American modernist painter around 1910-1940. He was born in Maine and the exibit includes a painting of Mt. Katahdin (Maine's tallest mountain and also the location of the northern end of the Appalachian Trail). So even in Nebraska, I can't get away from my home state.
I visited the State House and saw groups of visiting elementary school kids on a field trip to see government in action. The building is full of images of corn cobs - from the walnut wood ceiling of the Supreme Court chamber to the brass light fixtures in the basement. It also has wonderful mosaics in the floors, with images of various plant and animal life.
On my jog this morning, I went by the train depot. Amtrak's California Zephyr was waiting to depart. It left Chicago yesterday at 1:50 in the afternoon and will get to San Francisco tomorrow at 5:00 pm - a 53 hour trip. Back in 1982 - the summer I graduated from high school - I took the Greyhound from Boston to Los Angeles and back - that was something like 85 hours each way (3.5 days). I had not been back to Nebraska since that summer.
I have discovered that I will need to come again - I did not have a chance to visit the "Telephone Historical Museum" or the "National Museum of Roller Skating," which the hotel information booklet tells me is considered to be "the definitive source of roller sports history."

Time to go to this morning's meetings, then a flight home. Yesterday it was sunny and 70 degrees in Lincoln. In the evening, I called home - it had been snowing all afternoon.

2006-04-03T10:48:00.000-07:00

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.

2006-04-01T18:56:00.000-08:00

April Fool's Day 2006.

This seems like a good day to start a blog for the Fulbright Academy of Science & Technology (FAST).

I was a Fulbright Grantee to West Germany in 1989 - the year the Berlin Wall fell - and so I was in the last group of Fulbrighters to "West Germany." Thereafter, they just were going to "Germany." After my year as a Fulbrighter, I was interested in meeting with other scientists who had gone on Fulbright exchanges to foreign countries - Americans who went overseas or foreigners who came to the US. The internet was just beginnng and Google certainly did not exist, so there was no easy way for us to link up.

And so, FAST was an idea that floated around for a decade. In the fall of 2000, I organized a small group, and we incorporated an organization: the Fulbright Academy of Science & Technology. But I was busy with my three small children, so not much happened until 2003 when I did a mailing and got over 100 alumni interested. We established a formal board of directors, obtained our non-profit status from the US Federal Government, designed a simple website, and started sending out newsletters.

In 2003-2004, we remained a completely volunteer organization, with the board meeting once a month via conference call and me writing the newsletters. Also in 2004, we started organizing "Fulbright Forums" - meetings where Fulbright grantees, alumni, hosts and friends could exchange ideas and learn from each other.

In 2005, we decided it was time to move forward as an organization - and so we began to approach members, foundations, organizations, and others for funding. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation came through with a $35,000 grant for an on-line history project, and we were off.

That was almost exactly ten months ago. Our income in 2005 was nearly $70,000, and our goal is to break $100,000 this year. Some of it pays my salary. The rest pays for programs, interns, office supplies, travel, and meeting expenses.

Since then, I have sent thousands of emails, met with two Nobel Prize winners, hosted a conference in Berlin with 140 registered participants from 25 countries, and hosted programs in Belgium, Morocco, and several US states. With so much going on, I hired a Fulbright alumus, Emily Peckenham, who also was a grantee to Germany, to help out on projects, and this week we are interviewing for a summer intern - again a Fulbrighter is being sought out.

With this Blog, I will be sharing some of our successes (and perhaps some of our mistakes). I want to close by thanking our Board of Directors for their advise and assistance - David, Torsten, Flynn, Maggie, & Bob. Also our former board member Michelle and Karl who just joined the board in February. Also thanks to our members and donors.

You can read more about the Academy on our website: www.FulbrightAcademy.org