MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Three Middle Tennessee State University faculty members have an opportunity to take their research and teaching passions overseas after being selected as Fulbright Scholar Program recipients for the 2024-25 academic year.

Social work professor Sylvester Lamin will head to Sierra Leone in West Africa; the transcontinental country of Georgia in Eastern Europe and West Asia is the destination for journalism professor Gregory Pitts; while Center for Asian Studies Director Guanping Zheng will travel to Taiwan in East Asia.

The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Programs offer U.S. faculty, administrators and professionals grants to lecture and/or conduct research in a wide variety of academic and professional fields, or to participate in seminars.

The program awards more than 1,700 fellowships each year, enabling 800 U.S. scholars to go abroad and 900 visiting scholars to come to the United States, according to https://fulbrightscholars.org. 

About MTSU’s Fulbright winners

• In September, Lamin will travel to Freetown, Sierra Leone, where he will spend nine months working at Fourah Bay College, a constituent campus of the University of Sierra Leone.

The majority of Lamin’s time will be spent teaching social work courses. Educational materials are outdated, he said, and he hopes to integrate current social work theories, perspectives and knowledge base.

A smaller portion of Lamin’s time will be spent doing research on the challenges women of Sierra Leone face in academia.

“Social work is grounded in social justice and equality of all,” Lamin said. “This study will likely lead to policies that will benefit women in academia.”

• This year’s award is the sixth Fulbright experience for Pitts, who has spent time in Zambia and Montenegro on traditional assignments. He has also garnered three short-term Fulbright Specialists placements in Ukraine and Liberia.

For his most recent Fulbright Scholar assignment, Pitts will complete both research and curriculum project assignments in Georgia.

The Fulbright includes two visits of three months spread across two years. In anticipation of receiving a Fulbright Scholar award for the upcoming year, he headed to Georgia in April and spent the last three months working on his assignment. He will return in late January through April.

His research will examine journalists’ career views.

“Journalism remains an important contributor to public information in a democratic system of government, yet it becomes harder to work as a journalist given both media system changes and changes in government and public views viewpoints of journalism,” Pitts said.

Pitts’ curriculum project will have him working at the University of Georgia, Tbilisi, to assist the journalism and public relations programs in seeking an eventual accreditation review.

• Zheng, also a professor of media arts, was selected for the U.S.-Taiwan International Education Administrators Seminar. In March, he will spend two weeks in Taiwan learning about their higher education system and establishing connections with colleagues.

By participating in the Fulbright IEA seminar, Zheng will build MTSU’s capacity for international education, gain a cross-cultural perspective, and open doors to collaboration with colleagues and students in Taiwan.

Alumni of the Fulbright Program include 62 Nobel Laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, 80 MacArthur Fellows, and thousands of leaders and world-renowned experts in academia and many other fields across the private, public and nonprofit sectors.

— Nancy DeGennaro (Nancy.DeGennaro@mtsu.edu)