ATHENS, Ga. – Two University of Georgia professors, R.G. Brown and Christopher Peterson, recently received Fulbright Scholar grants.
Brown, associate professor of art in sculpture in the Lamar Dodd School of Art and the director of the Studies Abroad Program in Cortona, Italy, previously developed the project “Preservation of Traditional Artesian Boat Building practices of Ghana’s Coastal and Inland Water ways.”
During his Studies Abroad Program in the Tuscan community, Brown collaborated with local Italian tradesmen to design and build a traditional lake boat. The boat is now displayed at a local museum.
With this expertise, Brown will use his Fulbright grant to travel to Ghana as a participant of the African Regional Research Program to construct a Ghanaian style dugout boat with the help of the fishing village at Keta.
“My intention is to assist in preserving local cultural craft traditions, sharing that information with African Institutions at the same time assimilating that information into contemporary artistic practice,” said Brown.
Peterson, associate professor of forest ecology in the Department of Plant Biology, will travel to Helsinki, Finland, in August to conduct research on wind damage to forests and how they recover from such damage.
“A key question is how the damage from windstorms might change the species composition [which species are present] or species richness [how many species are present] in the recovering forest, compared to the pre-windstorm forest,” said Peterson. “Also we will be examining whether the patterns of deer & moose browsing are changed in the wind-damaged forests.”
Peterson also will lead a discussion group in the forest ecology department, which will focus on the effects of wind, fire, ice and other disturbances in forests in general.
“The time in Finland will broaden my knowledge to include boreal forest in addition to the temperate and tropical forests I already know about,” said Peterson.
Since 1946 the U.S. Government-sponsored Fulbright Scholar Program has provided faculty and professionals with an unparalleled opportunity to study and conduct research in other nations.
These UGA faculty members are among the 250,000 American and foreign university students, K-12 teachers and university faculty and professionals who will participate in one of the several Fulbright exchange programs. Recipients of Fulbright Scholar awards are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement and because they have demonstrated extraordinary leadership potential in their fields.
For more information, visit the CIES (Council for International Exchange of Scholars) Web site at www.cies.org. To speak with the UGA Fulbright campus representative, contact Page McCorkle at 706/542-0010 or pageme@uga.edu.