Wayne State University is proud to announce three winners of 2003-2004 Fulbright Grants through the Fulbright Scholar Program. They are Jorgelina Fidia Corbatta, professor, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures; Eileen Trzcinski, associate professor, Wayne State School of Social Work; and James Frick, professor School of Medicine.

Corbatta, Trzcinski, and Frick are among 800 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad to some 140 countries in 2003-2004. Established in 1946 under legislation introduced by the late Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the Fulbright program's purpose is to build mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries.

Corbatta's grant is for study in Columbia, where she taught from l977 to l987. She organized workshops on Borges, Cortazar and the Latin American short story for different cultural institutions such as Banco de la Republica, Museo de Arte Moderno and Instituto Colombo-Americano. With her Fulbright, Corbotta will teach at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota, on "History and Fiction in the Southern Cone," based upon her book Narrativas de la Guerra Sucia en Argentina, BsAs: (Corregidor, l999). She plans to conduct research on the Contemporary Colombian Narrative (film and literature) and feminine writing.

This past summer, Eileen Trzcinski, associate professor, Wayne State School of Social Work, visited Germany as a member of a Fulbright Scholars Special Studies Seminar on the Challlenges of Demographics in Germany. She also spent time at the German Institute of Economics Research as Fulbright Research Scholar before and after the seminar. The seminar addressed pressing demographics issues of joint relevance to German and the United States, such as the future financing of social security and health care insurance. Corbotta's research, which centered on the decisions new mothers make after childbirth and how these decisions affect their level of happiness and economic well-being, received extensive coverage in the German media.

James Frick, a professor in Wayne State's physician's assistant program, spent 2003 in Russia as a Fulbright Scholar in Preventive Health Care Education for Teachers and School Social Workers in Siberia, Russia. Frick's project stemmed from a lecture he gave to the physics faculty at Altai State University in 2001, which linked smoking and lung cancer. They found the information revolutionary - moreover - they had never been given that information. The Russian government is recommending the adoption of health curricula in Middle and high schools in Russia, which has never been presented before.

The Fulbright Program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Over its 56 years of existence, thousands of U.S. faculty and professionals have studied, taught or done research abroad, and thousands of their counterparts from other countries have engaged in similar activities in the United States. Recipients of Fulbright Scholar awards are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement and because they have demonstrated extraordinary leadership potential.

Wayne State University is a premier institution offering more than 350 academic programs through 13 schools and colleges to more than 33,000 students.

Contact: Art Bridgeforth
E-mail: abridgeforth@dmac.wayne.edu
Voice: (313) 577-2150
Web: www.media.wayne.edu
Fax: (313) 577-8154