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Greetings!
This is the July 2004 issue of the Fulbright Academy of
Science & Technology's news bulletin. Our publication is sent to
educational innovators and leaders in scientific and technical fields in
the US and around the world. Please refer to the end of this bulletin for
information about the Academy and its mission. We can be reached at
info@fulbrighter.org
We look forward to your involvement in the
Academy.
Eric S. Howard,
Editor
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Upcoming Programs and Events |
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| The Academy is hosting a reception on
Wednesday, September 1 in Cambridge, Massachusetts to honor Harvard
University, local Fulbrighters, and local hosts of visiting
scholars. For years, Harvard has been the leading institution
worldwide for hosting Fulbrighters. Each year 30-40 academic
scholars lecture or collaborate on research projects at the Harvard,
its graduate schools, and affiliated institutions.
The reception will be at 4:30-6:00 pm in the Agassiz Room at
Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, 26 Oxford St, Cambridge.
The Museum has twelve research departments - Biological
Oceanography, Entomology, Herpetology, Ichthyology, Invertebrate
Paleontology, Invertebrate Zoology, Mammalogy, Marine Biology,
Mollusks, Ornithology, Population Genetics, and Vertebrate
Paleontology.
Starting at 3:00, there will be a roundtable discussion with a
group of Fulbrighters. The topic is the impacts of Fulbright
scholarships on scientific innovation and on public perception of
science. If you plan to attend either part of the program, please
call Eric Howard at the Academy's office: 207-799-3098.
Other Meetings:
* Academy members will meet with
Fulbright alumni and friends from around the world at a gathering on
October 8-10 in Athens, Greece, as part of the Fulbright
International Interdisciplinary Conference.
* Fulbright
Association (US) will hold its annual conference at the Greece
Conference on October 7-8.
* The Academy is a co-sponsor of the
4th Annual New Partners for Smart Growth Conference, to be
held in Miami Beach, FL on Jan 27-29, 2005 (www.newpartners.org).
The lead sponsors are the US EPA, the US Centers for Disease Control
& Prevention, and the Smart Growth Network.
* The Fulbright
Academy is again organizing a meeting of members during the
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual
Meeting. The Conference is on February 17-21, 2005 in
Washington, DC.
Harvard Museum of Comparative
Zoology »
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Achieving our 2004 Goals |
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| The Academy has several goals for this year,
including producing this newsletter and organizing meetings, such as
the ones described above. These activites are financed through
membership dues and by donations, such as a recent $2,000 donation
from a California-based Fulbrighter & former business executive
in support of two upcoming outreach programs.
One very important goal this year has been to develop ties with
other organizations. For example, this past month, the British
Fulbright Scholars Association (www.bfsa.org) made the Academy an
"honorary member" of their group. We also partnered with World Water
Watch, a Massachusetts-based organization, on a proposal to the US
Environmental Protection Agency to establish an experts network on
watershed management. In addition, we have connected with the
Fulbright Alumni group in Germany, the Fulbright Association in
Singapore and the Hungarian Fulbright Association, whose president,
Dr. Akos Mathe, is a professor of botany at the West Hungarian
University.
Some members have taken Academy brochures to meetings as a way to
initiate conversations with others about their Fulbright experience
and at the same time recruit new members. In preparation for your
next meeting, please send us a note, so we can send some for you to
distribute.
Please contact Eric Howard at 1-207-799-3098 (email)
if you have questions or would like to see our wish list and learn
more about how we would invest your donation in growing the Academy.
Academy Programs
Website »
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Science Educator Finishes Second in TransAtlantic Sailing
Race |
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 Rich Wilson, the
creater of the SitesALIVE! educational website, recently competed in
the Transat, one of the most difficult sailing races in the world.
His site uses a series of unique travel expeditions as a way to
teach geography, engineering, and science to school children. They
currently have an archive of about 70 programs.
In this instance, the 55-year old sailor used the 12th
quadrennial running of the TransAt, in which 37 skippers raced
single-handed from Portsmouth, UK to Boston, Massachusetts. Because
of advances in engineering technology, records were broken in each
of the classes, from the 60-foot trimarans to the 50-foot monohulls.
Wilson sailed his 50-foot trimaran, Great America II, the
same boat that he used in 1993 to break the longstanding San
Francisco-to-Boston via Cape Horn record, which had been set in 1851
during the California gold rush. For that 1993 trip, he persuaded 12
major newspapers to publish an 11-part series that he wrote from the
boat for kids to read, and also persuaded Prodigy to produce his
first interactive learning adventure. He and his co-skipper survived
Cape Horn and broke 1851 record, arriving in Boston in 69 days 20
hours. There the sailors were greeted by a thousand schoolchildren
of the 1/3 million who had followed the adventure through the
newspapers and Prodigy.
This time, his trip was solo, and he completed the
Portsmouth-to-Boston race in just over 15 days. It is one of the
most difficult solo races becuase of the dangers in the North
Atlantic (icebergs, 50-knot winds, 30-50 foot waves, etc). The
skippers never have an opportunity to rest due to the hazards and
the need to keep the boats moving as fast as possible. Prior to the
race, Wilson worked with medical doctors in the Boston area to study
his personal sleep patterns and thereby optimally schedule his brief
naps. 
Internet technology is more common now than in 1993, so this year
hundreds of thousands of students were able to track his sleep
patterns, hear daily audio updates, study the weather and ocean
currents, and ask questions of experts, such as Dr. Ioannis
Miaoulis, the Director of the Boston Museum of Science; Dr. Chuck
Czeisler, a sleep specialist at Brigham & Women's Hospital; and
Dr. Brien Barnewolt, Chief, Department of Emergency Medicine at the
Tufts-New England Medical Center. For more information, please visit
the SitesALIVE! website. (Top photo is Great America II, bottom is
the overall winner, Geant - photos from www.thetransat.com).
The
SitesALIVE! Website »
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Other Educational Tools On-line |
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| As in previous issues, we are providing links
to selected internet sites -- sites that we find particularly
useful, interesting or fun.
In addition to the SitesAlive website mentioned
above, here are some other selections:
- As might be expected, The National
Geographic Society has a wonderful educational site for
teachers and parents.
- PathFinder
Science offers information on lots of science-related projects
and links to numerous other sites - it was started in 1998 by a US
Department of Education Technology Innovation Challenge Grant.
- The PaleoMap Project is a
more focused site, illustrating plate tectonics and the
development of the ocean basins and continents, as well as the
changing distribution of land and sea during the past 1,100
million years.
Please continue to share your websites - send us an email at info@fulbrighter.org . Note
that we provide these links because they have information that may
be of interest to you. FAST does not necessarily endorse the views
expressed or the data and facts presented on the sites.
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Selected New Members |
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 To promote growth in the Academy, we
will be giving a special gift to the 5th person to join each month
for the rest of the year. We have some very nice pens make of white
birch and some "first-day-of-issue" envelopes of the US Postal
Service stamp commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Fulbright
Program, issued on February 26, 1996.
Dr. William Hagar teaches phytobiology in the Biology
Department at the University of Massachusetts, Boston Campus. He
oversaw a program for monitoring a site in Boston Harbor through
remote sensing, with the data on salinity and oxygen levels posted
on the website.
Dr. Donald Blackketter is a mechanical engineer and
assistant director of the National Institute for Advanced
Transporation Technology at the University of Idaho, on of four
national centers established in 1991 under the Intermodal Surface
Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA). His Fulbright was to Quito,
where he worked on mechanical engineering curriculum and leadership
development and on the design and demonstration of clean vehicle
technologies.
Dr. Eduardo Oliva-Lopez, an engineer, was a visiting
Fulbright scholar at the University of Wisconsin, Plattsville in
2002. He was examining the impact of egocentric management on
achieving productivity and quality objectives. Now back in Mexico,
he was research project director at the School of Mechanical and
Electrical Engineering at the National Polytechnic Institute in
Mexico City.
Dr. Djuradj Stakic is Associate Professor of Human
Development and Family Studies at Penn State-Delaware County. His
research focuses on juvenile delinquency and violent behavior of
youth: phenomenology, etiology, prevent and treatment; holistic and
dialectic model of human, family and community interactions and
development; science of prevention theory and methodology. His
Fulbright experience took him to the Univeristy of Belgrade, where
he worked on programs for the prevention and treatment of juvenile
delinquency in Serbia.
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Your Organization and Your Membership |
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| The Fulbright Academy is an independent
non-profit organization based in the United States. We receive
support from selected Fulbright alumni groups, businesses,
institutions, organizations, foundations, and individuals interested
in developing an international network of leaders in science and
technology. We are not affiliated with the (US) Fulbright
Association, the US State Department or the Board of Foreign
Scholars.
The Fulbright Academy of Science & Technology uses the
expertise of our network of Fulbrighters and leaders in science to
address critical problems in education, scientific innovation and
economic development. Our database has over 10,000 Fulbrighters and
scientists around the world.
We are pleased to have the Singapore Agency for Science,
Technology and Research (A*STAR) as an institutional member and sponsor for
our electronic news bulletin.
While projects may be funded by organizations and foundations
that share our mission, membership income is an important part of
our annual budget. If you or your institution are not yet a member,
please consider joining today.
Click here to
become a member »
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