Dr. Michael H. Murphy, assistant professor within the Department of Teacher Education at Lander University in Greenwood, South Carolina, has been selected for a Fulbright Specialists project in Phitsanulok, Thailand, at Naresuan University during October 2013, according to the United States Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.
Murphy will collaborate with education faculty at Naresuan University concerning practical and theoretical strategies associated within the study of instructional technology.
Murphy, who is entering his sixth year teaching at Lander, is one of more than 400 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad this year through the Fulbright Specialists Program. The program, created in 2000 to complement the traditional Fulbright Scholar Program, provides short-term academic opportunities (two to six weeks) to prominent U.S. faculty and professionals to support curricular and faculty development and institutional planning at post-secondary academic institutions around the world.
The Fulbright Program, America's flagship international educational exchange activity, is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Over its 60 years of existence, thousands of U.S. faculty and professionals have taught, studied or conducted research abroad, and thousands of their counterparts from other countries have engaged in similar activities in the United States. Over 285,000 emerging leaders in their professional fields have received Fulbright awards, including individuals who later became heads of government, Nobel Prize winners, and leaders in education, business, journalism, the arts and other fields.
Recipients of Fulbright Scholar awards are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement. Among thousands of prominent Fulbright Scholar alumni are Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist; Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); Rita Dove, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet; and Craig Barrett, Chairman of the Board of Intel Corporation. Distinguished Fulbright Specialist participants include Mahmoud Ayoub, Professor of Religion at Temple University; Heidi Hartmann, President and CEO, Institute for Women's Policy Research; Percy R. Luney Jr., Dean and Professor, College of Law, Florida A&M University; and Emily Vargas-Barone, Founder and Executive Director of the RISE Institute.