Three OSU faculty earn Fulbright Awards

Monday, April 19, 2010

Drs. Heidi Hoffer, Allen Scott and Jeffrey White at Oklahoma State University recently were chosen as Fulbright Scholars to receive grants that will allow them to spend a full academic year teaching and researching at a university abroad. Hoffer will go to South Africa, while both Scott and White will travel to different locations in Poland.

“I want to congratulate each of these faculty members on their work to apply and receive this award,” said Regents Professor Peter M.A. Sherwood, dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at OSU. “I know they view their work abroad as a way to express gratitude for the collaborative help they have received from the faculty at the universities they will visit while contributing to the education of students there.”

Hoffer, professor of theater, will serve as a designer and adviser for the drama departments at the University of Pretoria and University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. She also will lecture on scenographic and theater technology topics to undergraduate and graduate students at both universities. Hoffer will observe the diverse influences of 11 different languages in the South African theater, where improvisation and the power of the story are so important that acting and costumes minimize set design.

Scott, associate professor of music history and coordinator of music graduate studies, will teach courses on musicology, early music notation, American music, and Polish music of the Renaissance and baroque eras in the University of Wroclaw’s Musicology Institute in Wroclaw, Poland. He also will continue research to develop a monograph on the musical culture and confessional identity of sacred music in Wroclaw from 1520 to 1648, and collaborate to compile a modern catalog of 16th and 17th century music collections from three principal Protestant churches there.

White, professor of chemistry, will conduct collaborative research in Poland this fall on work that centers on complex macromolecules – really large molecules – and how their organization controls their behavior, especially after they are mixed and form composite materials. Multi-component polymeric materials and composites can include a wide range of products from automobile and aerospace structural panels to artificial bone and joints. White’s research will subject certain composite materials to a variety of experiments to determine potential applications for the materials that are both biocompatible and biodegradable.

Recipients of the Fulbright awards are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields. The Fulbright program, which began in 1946 under the direction of Senator J. William Fulbright, focuses on fostering leadership, learning, and empathy between cultures around the world.