College of Education professor receives Fulbright Senior Specialists award

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
Contact:
Posted: May 7, 2008

HONOLULU - David P. Ericson, professor in the Educational Foundations Department in the College of Education at UH Mānoa, has been selected for a Fulbright Senior Specialists project in Denmark at Aarhus University during May 2008. His services, which will include a seminar, a lecture series, and the co-development of a master‘s program on education and educational policy in a multicultural society, were specifically requested by Aarhus University through the Fulbright Scholarship Board and U.S. Department of State.

As part of the selection process, the board determined Ericson‘s scholarly background, extensive international experience, and expertise on education in a multicultural context to be assets to the project, especially given Denmark‘s increasingly heterogeneous society. According to Ericson, in the past few decades, Denmark has welcomed numerous refugees and immigrants, and integrating these populations with their very different cultural and religious backgrounds into mainstream Danish society is proving to be a real challenge.

"The University of Aarhus, among the world‘s great research and teaching universities, is leading the way in addressing this challenge," Ericson added. "So, I am delighted to help the faculty out in whatever ways that I can."

Over the past 60 years, more than 285,000 emerging leaders in their professional fields have received Fulbright awards, including individuals who later became heads of government, Nobel Prize winners, and leaders in education, business, journalism, the arts and other fields. The Fulbright Senior Specialists Program complements the traditional Fulbright Scholar Program and 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.

"I am honored to receive this prestigious award through the Fulbright Scholarship Board and the U.S. Department of State," Ericson said.

Currently, Ericson serves as director of the Office of International Education in the College of Education. On sabbatical leave, he was also invited to give a set of lectures on moral and political education at the Institute for Social Economy and Culture at Peking University in Beijing, China.