Creighton Faculty member Receives Fulbright Award

Patrice Watson, Ph.D., associate professor of Preventive and Public Health at Creighton University Medical Center, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to lecture at the University of Zimbabwe Medical School during the 2004-2005 academic year, according to the United States Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

Dr. Watson will assist in the development of a new master’s degree program in biostatistics and epidemiology. She is one of approximately 800 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad to some 140 countries for the 2004-2005 academic year through the program.

Established in 1946 under legislation introduced by the late Senator Fulbright of Arkansas, the program’s purpose is to build mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries. The U.S. Department of State and the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs sponsor the program, which is considered America’s flagship international educational exchange activity. Over its 57 years of existence, thousands of U.S. faculty and professionals have studied, taught or done research abroad, and thousands of their counterparts from other countries have engaged in similar activities in the U.S. They are among more than 250,000 American and foreign university students, K-12 teachers, and university faculty and professionals who have participated in Fulbright exchange programs.

Recipients of Fulbright Scholar awards are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement and because they have demonstrated extraordinary leadership potential in their fields. Among thousands of prominent Fulbright Scholar alumni are Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist; Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); Rita Dove, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet; and Craig Barrett, CEO of Intel Corporation.