Indiana University Kokomo
Home • Site Index • Find People •

IU Seal
Office of Communications and Marketing

Parkison helps review Fulbright Scholar candidates

November 2, 2006

KOKOMO, Ind.—The U.S. Department of State has appointed Indiana University Kokomo Professor of Economics Kathy Parkison, Ph.D., to serve on a peer review panel assessing candidates seeking appointment as Fulbright Scholars in the Aegean and Black Seas Region of Eastern Europe. In 2006, the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs appointed some 800 Fulbright Scholars, U.S. academics and professionals tasked with studying, teaching, or conducting research abroad, while building mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries.

Parkison spent fall of 2005 as a Fulbright Scholar in the Republic of Georgia, where she taught at the university level and helped develop national economics curricula.

She will spend three years on the five-member panel of former Fulbright Scholars. Meeting periodically in Washington D.C., they will review all Fulbright applications for the U.S. State Department and the Council for International Exchange (CIES) in the countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey, Greece, Moldova, and Cyprus. “This is a very select committee,” said Parkison. Close to 100 applications have already been received for the Scholars’ posts, and Parkison anticipated that more would be received. “[The panel] will evaluate the appropriateness of each applicant’s background, experience, and achievements . . . [as well as] the quality of their proposal and the expected benefits of the grant activity.”

In light of her time in Georgia, Parkison said she hopes to see applicants who can demonstrate that they have a project that will benefit their proposed country and who are prepared serve as cultural ambassadors for the people of the United States. “Fulbright Scholars must also possess a large degree of flexibility,” she said. “Conditions in many of these host countries are not what American professors are used to. The Fulbright Scholar must be willing to adapt.” The peer review panel will forward its recommendation for potential recipients to the Fulbright Scholarship Award panel, which is appointed by the President of the United States.

Parkison also has been appointed to the Center Review Committee for the Indiana Council for Economic Education. As such, she will review operations at the economic education centers around Indiana, starting with IPFW in Fall 2006.