Thoughts on Service to the Profession and Community

It seems like I spend all of my time on faculty business, but yesterday I had the honor of participating in a National Selection Committee to select Fulbright Scholars for the 2011-2012 academic year.

Fulbright Scholars are selected through a rigorous procedure in which applicants from the U.S. to go overseas are first screened by a U.S.-based panel. There are many panels for each country the U.S. sends Fulbrighters to, for each of the different types of awards (faculty awards, student awards, English teaching assistantship awards, etc.). This year, my panel selected participants to go to India as English Teaching Assistants--the same type of program I ran in Taiwan for two years as a Fulbrighter in 2006-2008. After my panel meets, our approved, ranked list is sent to the country for further consideration.

A similar process is followed for Fulbrighters coming to the U.S. In each location, panels are convened for each type or category of grant. Then approved lists are sent to Washington for further selection. Each year, approximately 800 Americans participate in the core Fulbright program. About 1800 students come to the U.S. on Fulbrights each year. U.S. students can apply for study in 140 countries, and participate in English Teaching Programs in 50 countries.

Even though I am very busy, I took on this responsibility (which involved reading 72 applications online) and working with a panel to narrow the pool down to 16. I did it because of the impact that Fulbright had on my life and on the ETAs in our program. I wanted to ensure that appropriate participants were selected, and my expertise in having run such a program was very helpful in making proper selections.

More importantly, I wanted to give back. Someone took the time to be on a panel to select ME for a Fulbright. So the least I can do is respond when I am asked to choose participants.

I am very concerned that this type of service will become less valued at NLU with the new load policy. Our engagement with the scholarly community is important because that is how the scholarly community is run--it's supported by our collective work and support.

Faculty can be sure that I will foreground the importance of service in both the P&T discussions (for the new policy) and in any discussion about load, changes to load, faculty responsibilities, and changes to faculty expectations.