Dorothy Fragaszy, Tammy Lyskowinski and Hui-Chin Hsu have recently received Fulbright Scholar grants to travel abroad for professional development and research in the 2005-2006 award year.
Fragaszy, a professor of psychology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, received a grant through the traditional Fulbright Scholar Program to conduct research and conduct lectures at the University of São Paulo in Brazil. Her research there will focus on tool use in monkeys.
Fragaszy will serve as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar from March through June at the University of São Paulo’s Institute of Experimental Psychology. She will teach a graduate class in that program and will conduct collaborative research projects with students and colleagues at the university.
“The opportunity to spend a full semester in Brazil at the University of São Paulo is a dream come true for me,” says Fragaszy. “While I have traveled widely for my work, I have not previously had an opportunity to join a university program for an extended period as a teacher-scholar. I very much look forward to learning Portuguese and to working with faculty and students in São Paulo.”
Fragaszy’s research focuses on problem-solving, manipulation, foraging and feeding in primates. She works primarily with capuchin monkeys and human children. She collaborates with other researchers in laboratory studies of spatial cognition, all with nonhuman primates, and on studies of tool use, percussion and bimanual coordination in human children.
Lyskowinski, adviser to international faculty and staff in the Office of International Education, received a scholarship through the U.S.-Germany International Education Administrators Program. She participated in a group seminar on German higher education and society.
“My Fulbright experience was one that I will never forget,” says Lyskowinski. “Speaking with my German and Polish colleagues gave me an insight into their educational systems that I could have never learned through research alone. By visiting both Germany and Poland, I was able to see the contrasts between the two countries, instead of just comparing them to the U.S.”
This past October, Lyskowinski traveled with a group of administrators from U.S. universities, colleges and community colleges selected because of their work with international exchanges in higher education.
Hsu, an associate professor in the Department of Child and Family Development in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences, has been in Taiwan since September serving as a senior U.S. Fulbright Researcher at the School and Graduate Institute of Physical Therapy, College of Medicine, National Taiwan University. There until July, she is conducting research projects with colleagues at the university hospital. The focus of the project is on social interactions between pre-term infants and their mothers.
“It has been a wonderful experience for me to work with an interdisciplinary research team,” says Hsu. “I have done infancy research with healthy full-term infants in a laboratory setting for many years. My research in Taiwan is my first experience to team up with pediatricians and physical therapists to assess pre term infants and newborn full-terms in the hospital. I have learned a lot from my Taiwanese colleagues.”
In addition to research, she also teaches undergraduate and graduate classes on parenting and gives lectures to pediatric staff about infant mental health. She also has been invited to serve on the Selection Committee for the 2006-2007 Taiwan Fulbright grants and fellowships recommending graduate students and faculty in Taiwan to study or conduct research in the U.S.