University of Houston Celebrates Five Faculty Members Achieving Fulbright Status
2024 has been the University of Houston’s “year of Fulbrights.” This spring, a record number of Coogs were recognized by the Student U.S. Fulbright Program. Now, five faculty members are slated to take their talents far beyond campus as Fulbright Scholars.
UH professors earning awards from the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program and their destinations are as follows:
Chris Bronk, associate professor, Hobby School of Public Affairs – Australia
Jillian Conrad, associate professor, School of Art – United Kingdom
Byron Freelon, assistant professor, College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics – Brazil
Elizabeth Rodwell, assistant professor, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences – Japan
Adam Thrasher, associate professor, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences- Tanzania
These professors will travel around the globe to broaden their academic perspectives and share their expertise with other institutions of higher learning.
“The Fulbright is an academic bridge between our country and the world,” said Bronk, who will spend six months at the University of Adelaide. “It connects research programs and helps us to share our work with faraway colleagues. This, in turn, allows us to construct a global reputation in scholarship and establish international collaborations.”
Bronk’s project down under will focus on cyber and information influence. He will work alongside faculty at his host institution in building new computational tools to understand how malicious cyberattacks and information influence operations are directed at Australia’s public and democracy. Bronk will also write a policy paper on how the Australian government is building defenses to cope with this issue.
Working with colleagues from other parts of the world is particularly informative, Bronk said. Learning from researchers who hail from different countries helps expand a researcher’s worldview and gain invaluable insights from peers.
Fellow Fulbrighter Rodwell agrees. She will soon venture to Japan to engage in a project focused on user experience (UX) designers in creating conversational artificial intelligence (AI).
“We can learn a lot about the range of scholarly approaches taken to a subject or discipline by getting out of our American academic bubble,” she said.
“Because I mostly read academic studies in English, I am leaving out a lot of really important work on my subjects if I don’t think globally.”
During her Fulbright trip, Rodwell will base her work at a at a Waseda University-affiliated startup and assess how the culture and daily praxis of conversational UX designers constitute the architecture of conversational AI. She is optimistic that her work will lead to a partnership between her host institution and UH, one that will yield benefits for students.
“Thanks to this grant, I have envisioned a long-term partnership between the University of Houston’s Digital Media program and Waseda University and thinking about how studying abroad in Tokyo can benefit our students,” Rodwell said.
This is not the first time many of these Fulbright recipients have worked abroad. Thrasher, for example, has collaborated with peers in the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Canada. His upcoming trip to Tanzania, however, will mark the first time he’s visited Africa.
“I have done as much research as I can to learn what it will be like living in Tanzania,
he said. “I really don’t know what to expect, but I am confident that I will be comfortable. It is probably going to be quite an adjustment from life in Houston.”
During his journey, Thrasher will explore the use of neuromodulation— applying electrical currents to the nervous system — in the rehabilitation of spinal cord injury.
UH’s Fulbrighters will join more than 800 scholars nationwide selected for this honor. These include faculty, researchers, administrators, and established professionals teaching or conducting research in affiliation with universities and other institutes around the world.
Since 1946, the Fulbright Program has supported more than 400,000 scholars from all academic disciplines. These include 62 Nobel Laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, 80 MacArthur Fellows, 41 heads of state or government, and thousands of leaders across the private, public, and non-profit sectors.
“The Fulbright Scholarship is an extraordinary cultural exchange program that creates opportunities for scholars to teach and conduct research at a foreign university and build meaningful connections between academic communities in the United States and abroad,” Thrasher said. “The world has to come together when it comes to research, higher education, and pursuing true knowledge. The Fulbright unites the academic world and elevates everything that we do.”