Contact: Kenneth Billings
STARKVILLE, Miss.--A Mississippi State administrator soon will spend five weeks in Southeast Asia representing the United States and the university as a J. William Fulbright Senior Specialist scholar.
Stephen Cottrell, assistant director in the university's Office of International Services, will be traveling during December to Northern Thailand and Cambodia. In Thailand, he will collaborate on several projects at Maejo University.
At Maejo, he will work with administrators, faculty members and students at the nation's oldest agricultural institution of higher learning. He also will be meeting with students and members of local and hill tribes in the region.
"I am going to be there to learn what might be a good fit from what Mississippi State has to offer and they might need," he explained. "I will be a student, as well as a teacher."
The Fulbright Senior Specialist grants are an extension of the traditional Fulbright Scholar awards given to U.S. scholars and professionals. The program is designed to provide ongoing academic and professional collaborations with foreign institutions on curriculum and faculty development, institutional assessment and planning, and a variety of other activities.
Cottrell said MSU already has an advantage in the process since an alumnus is among the more than 320 faculty members teaching at the 8,800-student institution located in the city of Chiang Mai. Assistant professor Yonyooth Srigiofun, an MSU doctoral graduate, is Maejo's associate dean for strategy and international affairs.
Cottrell, who holds an MSU doctorate in education, said his visit will have three primary objectives: improving the sustainability of land-use from an agricultural perspective; helping campus officials establish a learning center; and expanding existing ties between the 129-year-old Mississippi land-grant institution and its 73-year-old Thai counterpart.
Cottrell said the third objective is a very important aspect, in light of President Robert H. "Doc" Foglesong's strong commitment to improve MSU's globalization efforts.
"It is important that we build a stronger relationship with Maejo University because we are a land-grant institution," Cottrell said. "We need to galvanize that relationship through international exchange of students and faculty."
By strengthening institutional ties, he said the effort also could help achieve similar relationships with schools in Vietnam and Cambodia.
Cottrell, who also completed a bachelor's degree in cultural geography from the University of South Alabama and a master's in linguistics from the University of Northern Iowa, joined the MSU staff in 1994 as the international student adviser. He currently is finishing an MSU master's in geosciences and has taught part-time in that department for more than a decade.
NEWS EDITORS/DIRECTORS: For additional information, contact Dr. Cottrell at 662-325-8460 or wec3@msstate.edu.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.