Stephenson Selected for Fulbright Specialist Award

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Steve Stephenson, University of Arkansas

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — University of Arkansas Professor Steve Stephenson has been selected for a Fulbright Specialist Award at Hanoi National University of Education in Vietnam.

Stephenson is a research professor in the department of biological sciences in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, and is regarded as one of the world’s leading authorities on a group of organisms known as myxomycetes, also known as slime molds.

He will travel to Hanoi National University of Education next March, and over the course of two weeks Stephenson will present a series of seminars and workshops to graduate and undergraduate students on subjects ranging from biodiversity, global climate change and conservation to forest ecology and mycology.

In addition, he will consult with administrators and faculty to evaluate the academic curriculum in environmental sciences at Hanoi National University of Education, meet with individual faculty members to discuss their research, and conduct a workshop on scientific writing. He will also discuss possible collaborative research opportunities that might be established between faculty and students in Vietnam and their counterparts at the University of Arkansas.

Stephenson is one of more than 400 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad this year through the Fulbright Specialist Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

The Fulbright Specialist Program, created in 2000 to complement the traditional Fulbright Scholar Program, provides short-term academic opportunities to prominent U.S. faculty and professionals to support curricular and faculty development and institutional planning at post-secondary, academic institutions around the world.

This is Stephenson’s second Fulbright award. He was a Senior Fulbright Scholar at Himachal Pradesh University in India in 1987. Over his academic career he has hosted five Fulbright Scholars from other abroad. Stephenson came at the university in 2003 after 27 years at Fairmont State University in West Virginia.

His program of research, which has been supported by a series of grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society, has taken him to all seven continents and every major type of terrestrial ecosystem. Stephenson is the author or coauthor of seven books and more than 300 book chapters and papers published in peer-reviewed journals.

He will be accompanied to Vietnam by his wife Barbara, who is an instructor in the department of mathematical sciences at the University of Arkansas.