Kent State University will be the first stop for dozens of Fulbright graduate students before matriculating to their graduate programs across the United States.
It's all part of a grant awarded to Amanda Johnson, Ph.D., director of the Gerald H. Read Center, who will lead the graduates participating this summer in seminars on American higher education, educational technology, leadership, and discipline-specific topics. Additionally, the grantees will receive advanced academic English coursework from the English Language Institute.
Johnson, principal investigator, was awarded a grant for $230,000 to host a 4-week Fulbright Pre-Academic Program at Kent State. Johnson and her co-principal investigator, Debbie Rozner, director of the English Language Institute; and Abdoulaye Fall, graduate assistant in the Read Center and doctoral candidate in the Higher Education Administration Program, will lead the cohort of 40 Fulbright graduate students. After the initial year review, Kent State is eligible to receive the grant for up to five years.
The Fulbright TEA program is a six-week program focused on general teaching pedagogy for international secondary teachers. Twenty-three grantees will travel to Kent State in September to take customized seminars on K-12 education in the United States, science education and English language teaching and learning. The cohorts will also take part in intensive field experiences in local high schools.
This is the second such grant Johnson has won at Kent State. She and her co-principal investigator Marty Jencius, PhD, associate professor in Counseling Education and Supervision, were also re-awarded the Fulbright Teaching Excellence and Achievement (TEA) grant for fall 2023. This is the fourth cohort Dr. Johnson has won and implemented since her move to Kent State in fall 2020, totaling $920,000.