Four UT professors are serving as Fulbright Scholars this academic year—J. Patrick Biddix, Joseph Bozell, Brad Collett, and Brendan McConville.
The Fulbright Program is a prestigious international exchange initiative that awards about 1,100 grants to American scholars each year.
Funded by the US government, Fulbright Scholars are chosen based on their leadership and academic merits and their abilities to teach, conduct research, and contribute to solutions for shared international concerns.
J. Patrick Biddix, an associate professor of educational leadership in the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences, is currently in Montreal conducting research at Concordia University as the visiting research chair for person and society.
His work focuses on how college students learn, individually and in groups, with technology. He is especially interested in how students use mobile technology in and outside the classroom and what this might mean for how they will learn and perform as future workers.
Biddix’s areas of expertise include college student involvement outcomes, technology in higher education, and research design. He teaches graduate courses in research methodologies, assessment and evaluation, and special topics in higher education and student affairs.
Joseph Bozell, a professor of biomass chemistry in UT’s Center for Renewable Carbon, is currently in Belgium conducting research at Ghent University. His research includes catalyst design for the sustainable production of chemicals and fuels from renewable feedstocks.
Bozell’s expertise includes both traditional organic chemistry and the use of transition metal organometallic complexes in organic synthesis. His primary research interests involve using the tools of organic chemistry to develop technology for converting renewable materials into chemical products and polymers.
Brad Collett, an assistant professor of plant sciences in the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, will head to Slovenia in February to teach at the University of Ljubjana for the 2016 spring semester. Collett’s project title is “Low Impact Development: Opportunities for a Society in Transition.”
Collett is a core faculty member in the UT School of Landscape Architecture, an intercollegiate partnership between CASNR and the College of Architecture and Design. He teaches advanced design studio and professional practices in addition to fundamentals of landscape design in the Plant Science program’s undergraduate landscape design concentration.
Collett’s research interests include landscape performance, specifically watershed stewardship through low-impact development, and sustainable planning and design in the context of professional practice. Community-engaged service-learning opportunities are offered under his leadership through UT’s Smart Communities Initiative and the Environmental Design Lab.
Brendan McConville, an associate professor of music theory and composition, will lecture and research in Pescara, Italy, beginning February 2016 at the Luisa D’Annunzio Conservatory of Music. His lectures will focus on recent American compositional and analytical trends.
His project will include conducting research on the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, collecting sound samples from locations that inspired D’Annunzio and integrating the sounds into the fabric of a new musical setting of the poem La Pioggia nel Pineto.
McConville’s areas of research include twentieth-century music analysis and the use of emerging technologies in theory pedagogy. His writings appear in scholarly journals and he is co-author of Music Theory Foundations: an Interactive eBook. His compositions have been commissioned, performed, televised, and recorded in the United States and Europe.
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CONTACT:
Tyra Haag (865-974-5460, tyra.haag@tennessee.edu)