Professor, students receive Fulbright awards

Two recent graduates and an assistant professor of theater are teaching and learning in Europe this year, thanks to the Fulbright Program.
Rick St. PeterAssistant professor Richard St. Peter has been named a Fulbright Scholar as a visiting professor at the University of Craiova in Romania. Throughout the 2016-17 academic year he is teaching contemporary American and British theater as well as Shakespeare performance.
St. Peter hopes his time in Romania will blaze a trail for students who want to study abroad. “We want to provide as many opportunities as possible for our students to go abroad during their time at Clemson,” he said. “It just seems like that’s becoming more and more of a priority for universities. The world is getting smaller and smaller. And there is the opportunity for our students to see that the theater is a global marketplace. Ultimately, they’re going to be able to work anywhere.”
Courtney Fink ’16 and Jenna Kohles ’15 are also in Europe for the 2016-17 academic year as part of the Fulbright Student Program.

Fink, of Orland Park, Illinois, graduated with a degree in history, a minor in Spanish and a degree in secondary education. She will be a teaching assistant at the Institute of Secondary Education Manuel Fraga Iribarne in Spain. Her main job will be to prepare students for the model U.N. program.
Kohles, of Cary, North Carolina, earned her degree in wildlife and fisheries biology. She will use her Fulbright grant to begin a master’s program in biology with a focus in ecology, evolution and behavior at the University of Konstanz and Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany. Her research will explore the social lives of a common bat species, which will help predict how bat colonies can persist through emerging environmental stresses such as climate change, habitat destruction and disease.

In existence since 1946, the Fulbright Program, sponsored by the U.S. government, is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries.