Two UNG faculty members win Fulbright Scholarships

They teach English at the University of North Georgia: Mina Kwon and Melissa Schindler are UNG’s latest Fulbright Scholars.

From Denise Ray, UNG…

University of North Georgia faculty members Dr. Mina Kyounghye Kwon and Dr. Melissa Schindler were named Fulbright scholars for the 2023-24 academic year.

Kwon, an associate professor of English, will travel to Chuncheon, South Korea, to spend a year teaching and working on her research-based translation book project.

Inspired by Dr. Tanya Bennett, a UNG professor of English who went to Romania as a Fulbright scholar, and Dr. Claudia Orenstein, at Hunter College in New York, Kwon attended Sheila Schulte’s virtual Fulbright workshop at UNG.

“After gathering information from the UNG Fulbright workshop and receiving advice from Dr. Bennett and Dr. Orenstein, I realized that the program would work amazingly for my research and teaching,” Kwon said. “My application would not have been possible without the network of resources and kind help I was able to obtain, including support letters from my colleagues.”

Kwon said South Korea was the best match for her because her research project is to provide research-based English translations of traditional Korean puppet plays, along with an introduction and annotations.

“Because my project is about puppet plays inherited from 19th century Joseon dynasty (premodern Korea), it requires a lot of research to translate, annotate and write introductions, and possibly to reconstruct the plays from the oral traditions in some cases,” Kwon said. “Going to South Korea will allow me to have access to much more data and resources than otherwise.”

Chuncheon’s location and cultural offerings are ideal for Kwon’s research as it is where the headquarters of UNIMA-KOREA (the Korean division of the international union of puppetry) is located. It is the puppetry center of South Korea, and easily accessible to and from other research locations. Students in Chuncheon would love learning how Korean and other literary cultures are represented in a global context, Kwon said.

Schindler, an assistant professor of English, will travel to Sri Lanka, where she will teach teachers of English how to teach English at the Open University, and work on her project about the history of the discipline of English.

“I proposed a research project that has two parts, but the goal of both of them is to understand South Asian and specifically Sri Lankan contributions to international Englishes,” Schindler said.

English is spoken more by non-native speakers than by native speakers, which makes English an interesting language because people who are non-native speakers or who are bilingual have shaped the history of English literature and English studies, Schindler said.

“It’s difficult because English is a global language, but it hasn’t really accounted for how our international colleagues and friends and other English speakers around the world have shaped it,” Schindler said. “So my goal with this is to understand what is Sri Lankan English, what’s the history of English studies in Sri Lanka and then how does that help us understand this global language.”

Shelia Schulte, UNG associate vice president for international programs, recently returned from a Fulbright-Nehru International Education Administrators Award trip to India. This Fulbright award is for international educators to learn about the higher education landscape in a particular country and to understand how to increase student mobility, faculty exchange and collaborative research interests.

The purpose of the Fulbright-Nehru Program is to promote people-to-people collaboration that will lead to the exchange of knowledge. The Fulbright delegation of 14 administrators, all from different states and types of institutions, visited 14 Indian institutions of higher education in three different cities in a two-week time frame to see the variety of institutions that exist in India’s complex educational system.

“My goals for this experience were to find appropriate faculty exchange and research opportunities, consider possible study abroad programs for short-term, practice-orientated activities, and learn more about recruiting undergraduate Indian students to UNG,” Schulte said. “Happily, all these goals were met along with enjoying rich interaction with the other Fulbright participants and Indian colleagues throughout the process.”

Fulbright Scholar Awards are prestigious and competitive fellowships that provide unique opportunities for scholars to teach and conduct research abroad. Fulbright scholars also play a critical role in U.S. public diplomacy, establishing long-term relationships between people and nations.

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