Briane K. Turley, research assistant professor of geography in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University, has received WVU’s first Fulbright Alumni Initiative Award (AIA).
The Fulbright award is granted to a home institution’s (WVU, in Turley’s case) faculty members who have previously won Fulbright Awards to teach or study overseas. More than 200 former Fulbright lecturers and researchers applied for grants in 2004, but only 30 were selected. WVU received a $25,000 grant, the largest award given this year.
The objective of the AIA program is to help translate an individual scholar’s Fulbright experience in ways that will have long-term impact in his home university. Turley has designed innovative projects that will foster and sustain mutually-beneficial relationships between WVU and the institution that hosted him for his Fulbright work -- the University of Szeged in southern Hungary, near that country’s borders with Serbia and Romania.
This grant will provide funding for WVU’s Office of International Programs to establish a student exchange program with the University of Szeged. WVU will send its first student group to Szeged in June 2005. Dr. Robert Blobaum, chair of the Department of History, and Dr. Dan Borsay, of the Religious Studies Program, will travel to Szeged with the WVU students in June 2005.
Turley hopes that semester-abroad programs between the two schools will follow in 2006.
AIA funds will also permit WVU to establish an online scholarly journal entitled “ Religion and Society in Central and Eastern Europe .” This journal is being developed in association with the International Study of Religion in Central and Eastern Europe Association (ISORECEA).
Eastern European scholars will visit WVU throughout the coming year in conjunction with this program. The first of these, Dr. Peter Torok, a Hungarian religious sociologist, arrives at WVU this week. In December, several WVU scholars, including Drs. Trevor Harris (chair of Geology and Geography), Aaron Gale (director of the Religious Studies Program), Dan Weiner (Office of International Programs) and Turley will attend the ISORCEA annual conference in Budapest. “The Hungarian Fulbright Lectureship in 2002 represents one of the most remarkable and personally enriching experiences I’ve known,” Turley said. A I am especially delighted to receive this year’s Alumni Initiative Award because it makes it possible for me to share my experiences in Central Europe with WVU students and faculty colleagues.”
Rudolph P. Almasy, interim dean of the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, praised Turley’s successful efforts to build on his initial Fulbright.
“Dr. Turley is a dedicated individual with a variety of interests who is working for the good of the Eberly College and its students,” he said.