American academics and professionals consider a Fulbright scholarship a feather in their cap. Apart from the money, the Fulbright award can also help an academic with his career because it confers a history of being supported by important foundations and winning awards, according to Jane Ingram Allen, an artist and 2004-2005 Fulbright scholar based in Central Taiwan's Taichung County. "It's always easier to get a grant if you've had one before," Allen said.
According to Fulbright promotional material, more Fulbright alumni have won Nobel Prizes than those of any other academic program. It is no surprise, then, that the awards are prestigious not only for the individuals who receive them, but also for the institutions they come from. When seven students and faculty members from Cleveland State University won Fulbright awards in the 2005-2006 academic year, the university's Web site proudly proclaimed the fact that, throughout the United States, only Cornell University and Pennsylvania State University had gotten more.
The Fulbright program is mainly funded by the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Governments of other countries, including Taiwan's, and private sector entities make contributions, both financial and non-financial. The latter typically includes loaning accommodation and cars to Fulbright recipients. Some of the teaching assignments in Taiwan are described as "cost-shared lectureships," for which the host institution provides a salary equal to that of a Taiwanese professor, and the Fulbright organization supplements this amount.
Fulbright stipends average between US$2,600 and US$2,800 per month. The Cleveland State Web site describes these amounts as "low," adding that, if they cannot arrange to take a sabbatical, most faculty members need additional financial support in order to accept a Fulbright award, "given that a faculty member on a Fulbright must take care of expenses both at home and overseas."
Accordingly, Cleveland State and a number of other U.S. schools offer additional financial assistance to members of faculty who win Fulbright awards, even though it means doing without their services for a year. This is further proof that the program is taken very seriously in academic circles.
"I didn't have a sabbatical, I had a leave without pay," said Patricia Golemon, an assistant professor of English at the University of Houston-Downtown in Texas who spent the 2005-2006 academic year at Providence University in Taichung County. "But the school was happy to give it to me for the prestige of having a Fulbrighter on the staff."
The Council for International Exchange of Scholars in Washington has just finished accepting applications from Americans wishing to spend the academic year 2007-2008 in Taiwan. According to Nancy Santos Gainer, CIES director of external relations, between the summer of 2005 and the summer of 2006, 36 Fulbright grantees worked in Taiwan. Fourteen were Fulbright Scholar grantees, 10 were U.S. Fulbright Student grantees while another 12 were Fulbright English Teaching Assistants.
Like their counterparts in the worlds of business, politics and the media, many academics have been eager to explore opportunities in China in recent years. However, some Fulbright scholars who initially consider going to the People's Republic of China conclude that Taiwan is a better place, because of the freedoms here.
"I wanted to be in China, but was afraid to actually go to the mainland," said Golemon, who found that in Taiwan, there were people of Chinese descent as well as a reasonably free and democratic society. "I figured I'd be sent to a backwater in China and the government would be very repressive," added Golemon, now back in Texas. "I am rather outspoken and so did not want to chance making trouble."
Historian Joe Eaton also planned on going to China, but during the application process changed his mind and opted for Taiwan. Freedom was an issue, but not the only one. "I was here for a brief visit about five years ago, and found the people very hospitable and friendly," he explained.
Eaton, a professor at St. Gregory's University in Shawnee, Oklahoma, has been teaching at the Graduate Institute of American Studies at Tamkang University in Taipei County's Danshuei since September 2005. He recently secured a renewal of his scholarship, allowing him to stay until July 2007.
He teaches courses on the United States in the 19th century and early American democracy to his master's and Ph.D. students in Taiwan. "They're true beginners. That makes it fun," he said.
"They like to engage with the material," explained Eaton, adding that his students often draw parallels between Taiwan as a young democracy and the United States early in its history.
According to Eaton, the tempo of academic life in Taiwan is a little different to that in the United States. Taiwanese college students, for instance, still shop around for courses a few weeks into the semester--something he believes would not happen in the United States. "I've had a great experience, with no big problems, " he concluded. "TKU has been very open, very hospitable."
Golemon also found teaching in Taiwan to be somewhat different to teaching in the United States. "Taiwanese students are very different from American students, and I had to really improvise to get them involved in the courses to a level that made me comfortable," she said. "They wanted me to stand in front of the classroom and lecture into a microphone because that's what Taiwanese teachers do, and what they are accustomed to. I would not do that, and some were disconcerted. Most got to like it before the end of the course, however."
A heavy workload thwarted Golemon's intentions of learning to speak Chinese. "I taught six courses the first semester, and studied Chinese once a week. I did not learn very much vocabulary, though I now know how the language works," she said. But the effort was not wasted: "I also do work in intercultural communication, and so this was very helpful to me for that undertaking."
John Antoine Labadie, a digital artist and educator, was drawn by Taiwan's strengths in certain types of high technology. "Taiwan was an obvious choice for someone digitally focused such as myself," said the Seattle native. "Taiwan is clearly a world leader in various digital fields, and in the application of digital technologies to educational, cultural and social contexts across a wide range of subject areas."
Labadie, who has been a faculty member in the Art Department at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke since 1994, spent the 2005-2006 academic year as a Fulbright Senior Scholar in digital art at National Chengchi University's Center for Creativity and Innovation Studies.
"I both taught and did research into how digital technologies are being integrated into art and visualization-based programs in Taiwan's universities and colleges," said Labadie, who founded the digital arts program at UNCP.
Labadie was also a visiting artist at Taipei National University of the Arts, in the Taipei suburb of Beitou, in the fall of 2005 and the spring of 2006. He was a visiting artist at Taipei American School during the same period, and during the fall of 2005, he was a visiting digital artist at the Institute for Information Industry's Digital Education Institute.
According to the CIES Web site, "Grantees in all categories may be permitted to spend up to one-fifth of their grant period in mainland China to engage in scholarly activities related to their project." This allowed Labadie, during his Fulbright year in Taiwan, to also take up a position of Visiting New Media Artist at Beijing Film Academy's New Media Art Lab, and do similar work at Nanjing Normal University. In both Taiwan and China, Labadie was accompanied by wife-collaborator, Margie Beth Labadie.
Not all Fulbright teachers work in higher education. Anna Lily Charles was one of a dozen who devoted the past academic year to teaching English in public schools. Charles spent 11 months in Yilan County, in Taiwan's northeast, working as an assistant teacher in two elementary schools.
"At my main school, I co-taught grades one to six with a Taiwanese English teacher, conducting lessons derived from the provided texts, but incorporating fun activities as well. I also conducted a few teachers' classes and activities for the school," said Charles.
"At the larger school located in the center of the city, I independently taught classes of grades three through six, usually designing supplementary lessons and focusing on oral practice and listening," explained the native of Larchmont, New York. "I also designed, created and directed a student puppet production of Cinderella."
Just before she set out for Taiwan in the summer of 2005, Charles graduated from Pitzer College in Claremont, California with degrees in Environmental Studies and Studio Art. According to its Web site, for the past four years Pitzer College has won more Fulbright awards for its size--around 950 students--than any other school in the United States.
Pitzer's Fulbright grantees have taught English in various countries around the world, including South Korea and Bosnia-Herzegovina. But Charles chose Taiwan because, she said, the opportunity presented itself. "I was intrigued by the country's unique political situation, its languages and its people. I wanted to learn more about it, and also have a chance to visit other countries in Asia, an area of the world I had yet to explore."
"The high point of being in Taiwan," she concluded, "was learning a great deal about a country and a culture that I previously knew nothing about."
Copyright 2006 by Steven Crook.