Three Stetson University faculty members, Dr. Paul Croce, Dr. Bill Nylen and Dr. Nathan Wolek, have been awarded Fulbright Scholar grants to travel abroad to teach and conduct research during the 2012-13 academic year, the U.S. Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board announced.

Recipients of the prestigious Fulbright grants are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields. The program operates in more than 155 countries worldwide.

Croce, professor of history and American studies, was awarded the Fulbright to serve as a lecturer in American intellectual history at the University of Roma in Italy in spring 2013 and as scholar-in-residence at the University of Potsdam in Germany in June 2013. A Stetson faculty member since 1989, Croce is a cultural and intellectual historian who earned his Ph.D. from Brown University. His research focuses on the life and work of William James, the founder of American psychology and pragmatism; Croce recently served as president of the William James Society. At Stetson, he teaches on issues in American history related to major values questions including environmental debates, war and peace, healthcare issues, science and religion.

Nylen, professor and chair of political science, has been awarded a year-long Fulbright research and teaching fellowship in Maputo, Mozambique. He will teach a course on practical methods of participatory democracy and research efforts to implement participatory democratic practices in Mozambique at the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane in Maputo. A faculty member at Stetson since 1992, Nylen received his Ph.D. from Columbia University. He has been studying Brazil for nearly 30 years. For the past 15 years, he has been studying former Brazilian President (2002-2010) Luis Incacio Lula da Silva, better known as the founder of the Workers’ Party in Brazil. Nylen leads Stetson’s Latin American Studies Mentored Field Experience to Brazil.

Wolek, associate professor of digital art, was awarded a Fulbright to spend six months in Norway this fall. During that time, he will work on significant enhancements and extensions to Jamoma, an open-source software library for computer musicians at the Bergen Center for Electronic Arts. A Stetson faculty member since 2005, Wolek earned his Ph.D. in music technology from Northwestern University. Wolek is an audio artist and researcher who studies advanced signal processing techniques, multimedia performance, and electronic music history. He has performed as a laptop instrumentalist across the United States and in Canada and Brazil.

Croce, Nylen and Wolek are three of about 1,200 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program during the 2012-13 academic year. The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.

The primary source of funding for the Fulbright Program is an annual appropriation made by the U.S. Congress to the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations and foundations in foreign countries and in the United States also provide direct and indirect support.

Since its establishment in 1946 under legislation introduced by the late U.S. Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the Fulbright Program has given approximately 310,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists, and scientists the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns. Of that number, 116,900 scholars are from the United States, and 192,800 are from other countries. The Fulbright Program awards about 8,000 new grants annually.

More information is available at http://fulbright.state.gov.