Professor of management, Richard Kernochan, has received the Fulbright grant and is going to Vietnam next spring for about six months.

Kernochan will teach several courses and mentor research efforts at the Hue University of Economics, Vietnam.

Kernochan was asked by the Fulbright Scholar Program to select three countries that he would like to visit. While Thailand and New Zealand were among his choices, Vietnam was at the top of his list.

Kernochan said he has always been interested in the Southeast Asia country.

‘I chose Vietnam for several reasons. One is I have been interested in Vietnam as a country, I always like Vietnamese students and I like Vietnamese food,’ said Kernochan.

Kernochan had decided to apply for the Fulbright Scholar Program when his colleague at the CSUN management department, Richard Moore, a 2005 Fulbright scholar who went to Indonesia, recommended it to him.

‘He is interested in international issues and business, and he is the kind of person who would do well working in foreign culture because he is flexible. He has done it before. He would do well,’ said Moore.

Kernochan is one of 47 CSUN faculty members to receive the Fulbright award since 1980.

According to the Fulbright Scholar Program website, this U.S. government flagship program in international educational exchange, was proposed in 1945 by former Senator J. William Fulbright and was approved by Congress the following year.

The program, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, was designed to promote ‘mutual understanding between people of the United States and the people of other countries of the world.’

The Fulbright Program sends scholars and professionals every year to over 140 countries. The scholars give lectures and/or conduct research in various academic and professional fields.

The program provides U.S. citizens and nationals of other countries a variety of educational activities, primarily university lecturing, advanced research, graduate study and teaching in elementary and secondary schools.

According to Moore, there are different types of the program. Professors can either focus on teaching or research while abroad or do a combination of teaching and research. In order to receive the grant, writing a proposal about what one plans to do with the grant is necessary. The application then goes through the selection process twice in Washington and to the country that the applicant applied to.

‘It is a difficult process to survive. That’s why it is prestigious to get Fulbright,’ Moore said.

Since the program’s inception, about 279,500 participants have been chosen to exchange ideas and to contribute to finding solutions to shared issues.

‘I learned some details that I didn’t know about some of my subjects. When I was doing research, I learned some new things. We discovered at least four species,’ said biology professor Robert Espinoza, who was a 2007 Fulbright recipient and studied about lizards and other reptiles in Argentina.

‘I learned that all ideas of business education is not a perfect fit for (the) developing country (Indonesia),’ said Moore.

Both professors said that they want to recommend this opportunity to more faculty members at CSUN in order to learn about international issues.

Moore said that the larger purpose of the Fulbright Program is to promote international, person-to-person relationships between Americans and colleagues in other countries.

Kernochan will leave to Vietnam in January 2009 for five to six months. He said that he expects to learn as much from the students as they will learn from him.

‘I have no way to know what’s going to happen (in Vietnam), but I’m ready for that,’ said Kernochan.