The Fulbright staff in Belgium interviewed me during my visit. They asked me to describe some of my experiences with the program and explain how I got involved in it.
I hope the interview is helpful to other Fulbright scholars and to academics who would like to invite Fulbright scholars to speak at their institutions.
And, I hope my friends will enjoy hearing about what I was up to during my recent travels in Portugal and Belgium as well.
We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto! Let’s tell our story…. (Image posted on Flickr by James Clark.)
This is the final installment of a four-part series on blogging. The full set includes:
Fulbright’s sponsors encourage the students and scholars who receive Fulbright grants to blog about their experiences. They want to publicize the Fulbright program, the work we (their Fulbrights) are doing, and the cultural nuances we are discovering. They want us to share who we are and what we learn. Why not generate as much good publicity as we can?
If you’ve gotten your Fulbright blog up and running, you are ready to publicize your work. (If, on the other hand, you haven’t gotten started blogging because you’re still feeling overwhelmed by technical issues, you may want to check out Daniel Piechnick’s Website Setup Guide 2013: The Dummies’ Guide to Setting Up a Website.)
Based on past blog tips I’ve posted, you may have determined what level of privacy you desire. This matters because everyone in the world will be able to see what you post on a public blog site.
You may have shied away from being very open or very public about events in your life, but even if you don’t want to be highly public about everything you do, you will probably want to your friends and family know about your blog. In one fell swoop, you can notify them of the blog’s existence and invite them to receive automatic emails of everything you post. (If you are using WordPress, you can find the tools on your Dashboard — just look for the “users” button and then “invite new.”)
If you’re feeling ambitious, you may want to invite everyone in your contacts list.
Today we’ve got new technologies. (Image downloaded from Tumblr.)
And if you’ve decided to “go for the gold,” and to use your blogging efforts to full affect, you can generate a wide audience. The following tips can help:
And they can help us spread the word. (Image downloaded from Toastmasters.)
You can load notifications to your personal page in Facebook, or you can set up a Fan page for your blog. You’ll need the Fan page if you want to enable visitors (to a WordPress blog) to click “like.” Keep in mind that only people who have “liked” your page will see posts you stream to that Facebook page. As a result, I chose to stream posts to my own personal Facebook page which has far more “friends.” (And, thus, I’ve not yet made good use of my Fan page.)
Jonathan Kennedy (the spouse of a Fulbright) clued me into the value of using Facebook “likes” to tag businesses and organizations you want to become more involved with in your new Fulbright home. I subsequently realized that I could increase interest in my blog by posting links on the Facebook pages of those businesses and organizations when I mention them in a post.
WIth today’s Internet you are always “On Air.” (Image from National Publicist.)
There are many good sources of help on line. For instance, WikiHow has a post about using social media to create interest in your blog. It recommends (and explains how) to:
Regarding search engine optimization, WikiHow discusses:
In signing out, I’ll mention one last, critical point about Fulbright blogging:
It goes without saying that in everything you do as a Fulbright, and particularly on the on the Internet, you’re a cultural envoy. Your job as a Fulbright is to facilitate and grow cultural understanding and respect. That means, of course, that you need to consider what you post from multiple perspectives and stay positive in what you post about your hosts.
Flimerz explains “you can draw viewers by connecting with your audience.” (Image from Flimerz.)
Anil Dash provides “A Blog About Making Culture.” (Image from Anil’s blog site.)
If you’d like to become a Fulbright Scholar, now is the time to start your application! Don’t put it off another minute….
This year’s competition opens February 1. Applications for the core scholars program are due August 1. Other deadlines are listed on the Fulbright website. This page has information for US and non-US scholars. (Information on Fulbright Student programs is available here.)
Andrew Riess <ariess@iie.org> of the Fulbright Scholar Program emailed the following note today. He’s offering a Webinar about how to prepare your application. I took part in one of his Webinars while I was preparing my second application (which met with success).
| Dear MyFulbright Community Member,
Please join us for a Webinar on preparing to apply for your Fulbright from 2:00 pm to 3:00 pm (Eastern Standard Time) on Wednesday, January 16. The competition opens February 1 and now is a good time to think about what is needed to apply. This Webinar will include a discussion of what is involved in the process of finding an appropriate program and the materials that will be needed for application. Reserve your Webinar seat now at https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/427536544. |
I’m excited to welcome new visitors from Africa.
I’m happy to report that people from three different countries in Africa have found their way to this blog in the past few days.
It appears that some places in the world are more difficult to reach via blog than others: the region around China, the Sahara, and Greenland are still missing from my map. Perhaps that says something about the distribution of population (Greenland and parts of Africa), resources and Internet access (parts of Africa and China), and restricted freedom of information (China)?
In any case, I’ve enjoyed sharing ideas with my African friends ever since my first visit to Tanzania (in 2003). Since then I’ve returned to Tanzania and visited South Africa and Tunisia (all with students) as well.
A highlight of my life experience has been the Fulbright program I conducted in Tanzania in 2005, though I am still working to make sense of many things I saw and experienced.
This is a flier for the Fulbright-Hays program I conducted on behalf of Hampton University and the US Department of Education. (I wrote a grant proposal that was accepted, and I served as Principle Investigator of the grant and also as director of the program.) In the group photo, I’m standing second from the right. Many people in this photo are my friends on Facebook still today.
Shannon Chance and Christine Franck.
Prince George’s Street in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Meet my colleague Christine Franck.
I was introduced to Christine when I was delivering a guest lecture at the University of Notre Dame while she was an adjunct professor there. She usually practices architecture in New York and blogs about classical architecture. She has also written several books and has served as president of the board of the Institute for Classical Architecture and Classical America.
During 2012, Christine and I got together a couple of times in Williamsburg to discuss each others’ research. Christine has a fascinating idea for an architectural research project. I’ve been helping her figure out how to pitch the idea to Fulbright. There are Fulbright grants available to teachers, researchers, and professionals… in my book, she’s all of these.
Without giving too much away, I can say: Christine is interested in documenting a certain type of housing that is relatively unknown but that she thinks holds keys for the development of sustainable cities and towns. We hope to connect Christine with professors in Europe who are doing research the same area, in hopes she can do funded research alongside them on the topic she has defined.
A photo my dad, Don Massie, took outside the Wren Building on graduation day, May 2012.
It seems fitting that I meet this classical architect in Williamsburg — the heart of colonial Virginia. It’s also the place I earned my PhD.
I always enjoy being on William and Mary’s campus and seeing the Wren Building. It’s the place where I received my diploma in May 2010 — right there on the lawn in front of the famous building. I felt immensely honored to have received a scholarship from the Christopher Wren Association to study at this amazing university… Christopher Wren was an English architect and I appreciated studying at an institution that held an architect in such high esteem. About this building, the Colonial Williamsburg website explains:
The Wren Building at The College of William and Mary in Williamsburg. Photo downloaded from Colonial Williamsburg website.
The College of William and Mary’s Christopher Wren Building is the oldest academic structure still in use in America. Construction on the building began August 8, 1695, two years after the school was chartered; it is the signature building of the second oldest college in the nation (next to Harvard). Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, John Tyler, and John Marshall studied in its rooms. George Washington was once chancellor of the college, which is now a distinguished university.
Three times destroyed by fire, the appearance of the brick-walled Wren Building has often changed, but it stands today much as it appeared by 1732. It was the first major building restored by John D. Rockefeller Jr., after he began Williamsburg’s restoration in the late 1920s.
Ireland by Chance 