Bruce Edwards, professor and associate dean, Bowling Green State University
Lecturing and Research: Communications and Journalism, Literacy in Kenyan Universities; Communications, Journalism and Literature
Kenya
August 1999-June 2000

© 2000 Richard Lord

Bruce Edwards is teaching communications and journalism at Daystar University in Nairobi, Kenya.

Bruce Edwards, a professor of English and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Bowling Green State University (BGSU), received a grant last year to lecture and conduct research at Kenya's Daystar University. Edwards was invited to teach graduate and undergraduate courses in journalistic writing, communications, rhetoric and criticism as well as a course on C.S. Lewis, an author whose work he specializes in. He was also asked to make recommendations for expanding the communications curriculum at Daystar.

Edwards looked forward to his Fulbright grant because it presented the opportunity to teach in a nonwestern academic environment. Immersing himself in an unfamiliar culture and educational system, Edwards felt, would help him gain a more thorough understanding of the challenges international students face at his home institution. He also hoped to identify new teaching methods for multicultural classrooms, given that BGSU is just one of many institutions of higher education in the United States that serves a large number of foreign students. Having gained a deeper appreciation for the difficulties these students must encounter as newcomers to United States, Edwards hoped "to return to my home campus equipped with fresh ideas for expanding and improving our international outreach, and how better to prepare staff to orient our African students to a midwestern American campus.

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