Cal Poly Named Top Producer of Faculty Fulbright Scholars Among Nation’s Public and Private Master’s Universities and Colleges

(LEFT) Thomas Jones

Five professors are spending at least a quarter at colleges in Italy, Morocco, Peru and the United Kingdom during the 2016-17 academic year.

SAN LUIS OBISPO — Cal Poly has been named a top producer of U.S. Fulbright scholars for the 2016-17 academic year by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Five faculty members, including three multi-year recipients, received Fulbright grants — more than any other public or private masters-level university in the nation.

Cal Poly’s Fulbright scholars represent four of the university’s six colleges: John Battenburg, a three-time Fulbright award winner in the College of Liberal Arts; Chris Carr, a four-time Fulbright scholar from the Orfalea College of Business; R. Thomas Jones of the College of Architecture and Environmental Design; and, from the College of Engineering, Zachary Peterson and three-time Fulbright scholar Jose Macedo.

The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational exchange program. Its Core Fulbright Scholar Program offers more than 500 teaching, research or combination teaching/research awards in more than 125 countries.

“Being named the top producer of Fulbright scholars in the nation is a great honor and speaks to the high quality and caliber of our faculty,” said Cal Poly President Jeffrey D. Armstrong. “I am proud of these dedicated educators, who will gain from and be inspired by these teaching assignments abroad, returning with new lessons to share with our students.”

Also named to the top-producer list of master’s institutions, with three scholars each, were: College of Staten Island (The City University of New York); Ithaca College (New York); Jacksonville State University (Alabama); James Madison University (Virginia); Salem State University (Massachusetts); and two California schools: Mills College and San Jose State University.

The University of South Florida in Tampa was the top school among research institutions with 12 Fulbright scholars. Cal Poly also ranked 16th in the nation overall after such institutions as University of Washington and University of Texas at Austin, each with six scholars.

Since its inception in 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided more than 370,000 participants — chosen for their academic merit and leadership potential — with the opportunity to exchange ideas and contribute to finding solutions to shared international concerns. Since 1984, Cal Poly faculty have received 44 Fulbright scholar awards.

The Fulbright Program is funded through an annual appropriation made by Congress to the Department of State. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations and foundations abroad and in the U.S. also provide direct and indirect support.

In the U.S., the Institute of International Education’s Council for International Exchange of Scholars administers and coordinates the activities relevant to the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program on behalf of the Department of State, including conducting an annual competition for the scholarships.

The Fulbright Program also awards grants to U.S. students and teachers to conduct research and teach overseas.

About Cal Poly’s 2016-17 Fulbright Scholars:

John Battenburg
College of Liberal Arts
Battenburg, a professor in the English Department, is teaching at Cadi Ayyad University in Marrakesh, Morocco. His project is titled: Preparing Effective and Innovative English Language Teachers. This is his third Fulbright grant; previously he served in Tunisia, 1995-96 and 1996-97. He has also served as U.S. AID consultant in Costa Rica and was named a U.S. State Department academic specialist in Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Austria. His work on the California Central Coast Online Dictionary, which was compiled by his students in 1999, was featured in the New York Times.

Chris Carr
Orfalea College of Business
Carr is the recipient of the 2017 U.S.-Italy Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Business award. A business law and public policy professor, Carr also served as associate dean for the college from 2004-09. He will visit the University of Naples Parthenope to collaborate on research with faculty primarily from the Department of Management and Quantitative Studies. He will also teach doctoral seminars in law and economics, entrepreneurship, and presentation design. Distinguished Chair awards are considered the Fulbright organization’s most prestigious award. Carr was selected for one of just two chaired positions offered in Italy this year. He is also a prior three-time Fulbright award recipient, having been selected to advise as a senior specialist at top science and engineering universities and business schools in Tunisia, Pakistan, and Mongolia.

R. Thomas Jones
College of Architecture and Environmental Design
Architecture Professor Jones, who served as dean of the college from 2001 to 2012, directs Cal Poly’s San Francisco Urban Program. As a Fulbright scholar at Cardiff University in Cardiff, Wales, in the United Kingdom from September to December 2016, he joined faculty and students of the Welsh College of Architecture on a multidisciplinary academic and community partnership project. His work focused on citizen participation and large-scale urban design methods, and the integration of architecture students into public planning efforts in Cardiff's Grangetown neighborhood.

Jose Macedo
College of Engineering
Macedo, a professor and former chairman of the Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering Department, will teach at the University of Technology and Engineering in Lima, Peru. He is a three-time Fulbright scholar and was a reviewer for the Fulbright Scholar program for four years. From March to July 2017, Macedo will teach and collaborate in research projects at UTEC. His focus areas include quality, lean management, statistical analysis, and automation, robotics and machine vision. He also plans to conduct a benchmark study of Peruvian manufacturing industry practices in conjunction with UTEC students and faculty. In 2008, he received a Fulbright Scholar award to work at the Universidad Tecnologica de Panama (UTP) for seven months.

Zachary Peterson
College of Engineering
The associate professor of computer science visited last fall at University College London, the United Kingdom’s largest postgraduate institution and regarded as one of the world's leading multidisciplinary research universities. His project title was: This Is Not a Game: Advancing Cybersecurity Research and Education Through Play. He will continue some of his ongoing research in the use of games and play for teaching computer security concepts to new, younger, and non-technical audiences. He said being named a Fulbright scholar was the result of a package of increased U.S.-U.K. cyber-security cooperation that grew from bilateral meetings in January 2015 between then-President Barack Obama and former U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron. Peterson leads Cal Poly’s computer cybersecurity program.

More online:
- For more information about the Fulbright Program, visit http://eca.state.gov/fulbright.
- For lists of Fulbright Scholar recipients, visit https://www.cies.org/.