The Council for International Exchange of Scholars in Washington, D.C. has awarded a Fulbright to Peter Eisinger, professor of urban affairs and director of the State Policy Center, College of Urban, Labor and Metropolitan Affairs (CULMA), Wayne State University.

Eisinger, a Detroit resident, was selected to hold the Thomas Jefferson Distinguished Fulbright Chair at the University of Gronigen, Netherlands, for a four-month period beginning in September 2002. He will be teaching American Urban History, American Urban Policy and Race in American Cities.

The Fulbright Program, America's flagship international educational exchange program, is sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, United States Department of State. Since its inception in 1946, approximately 72,000 U.S. and foreign scholars have participated in the program including someone very close to Eisinger, his father, Chester Eisinger.

"My father was one of the pioneers of the program, receiving a Fulbright to Cairo, Egypt in 1951-1952. I remember accompanying him as a young child...a very exciting time in Egypt's history," recalled Eisinger. "We were in Cairo at the time of the 1952 Revolution, when King Farouk was deposed." The Eisinger family witnessed the burning of Cairo and the toppling of Egypt's government.

Chester Eisinger, a professor of American literature at Purdue University, received another Fulbright opportunity in Innsbruck, Austria in 1960. Peter also followed his father on this assignment and attended the University of Innsbruck for one year. In 1971, the senior Eisinger accepted his third and final Fulbright assignment in Tokyo, Japan.

Following a year of study abroad in 1960-61, Peter enrolled at the University of Michigan completing both a bachelor's and master's degree, then moved on to Yale University where he earned a Ph.D.

He served on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin from 1969-1997 and has served as a visiting faculty member at the University of Essex, Columbia and Brown universities.

Eisinger joined the faculty at Wayne State in 1997 and also assumed the role of director of the State Policy Center. The center, a part of CULMA, is a nonpartisan entity designed to address statewide and urban issues through various methods including: nationally known speakers, policy seminars in Lansing and Detroit, policy conferences, research summaries by Wayne State faculty, policy publications and research resources for use by researchers and policy makers.

The Wayne State University State Policy Center has offices in both Detroit and Lansing.

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Wayne State University is a premier institution offering more than 350 academic programs through 14 schools and colleges to more than 31,000 students in metropolitan Detroit.