Four members of the UVM faculty have recently been named Fulbright Scholars and will spend the 2010-2011 academic year studying abroad. The Fulbright Program is an international educational exchange program designed to increase understanding between the people of the United States and other countries. A total of 800 American faculty and professionals were winners and were awarded grants to lecture and conduct research in their chosen fields. Richard Johnson, associate professor in the College of Education and Social Services, will be working on project in Hong Kong called “Hong Kong’s New Public Administration: A Need for Cultural Competencies in the 21st Century.”     He will teach a doctoral-level policy course at Hong Kong Baptist University and write a book in order to address the change in Hong Kong’s racial/ethnic population. Cynthia Gerstl-Pepin, associate professor in the College of Education and Social Services, will be in China working on the project “American Higher Education in Global Perspective.” Gerstl-Pepin will be teaching at Beijing Normal University. She will also do research comparing the American and Chinese educational systems to help educators in the U.S. understand how China has become one of three global economic superpowers over the past 30 years.          Jon Erickson, associate professor in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, will be in Tanzania working on the project “One Health — Transdisciplinary Disease Modeling and Inventions at the Human-Livestock-Wildlife Interface in Semi-Arid Ecosystems of East Africa.” This project is intended to confront disease epidemics and environmental ruin.  He will develop a model for the Ruaha Landscape of Tanzania, where increasing a lack of water has led to an increase in disease.     Jurij Homziak, extension assistant professor in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, will be in Kazakhstan working on the project “International Environmental Impact Assessment and Principles and Practices of Lake, Marine and Coastal Ecology for Kazakhstan.”         Homziak plans to teach three courses about the structure and organization of aquatic, inland marine and associated coastal ecosystems and to promote their conservation, restoration and sustainable use.          Source: University Communications