Syed E. Hasan, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Geoscience, has been selected for a Fulbright Senior Scholar award and Rita Barger, Ph.D., Associate Professor in the School of Education, will serve as a Fulbright Specialist at Trakya University in Turkey for the 2019-20 year.

Hasan will be affiliated with the University of Jordan, Amman where he will teach a course in his specialty area of waste management. 

“I am hoping to be able to share my expertise in waste management with Jordanian officials in helping them turn solid waste into a resource for energy generation and material recovery,” Hasan said. 

This is the second time Hasan has been selected for this award. In 2016 he taught at Qatar University where he worked with students on conducting waste assessment to help the university meet its recycling and sustainability goals. 

“Officials from the U.S. embassy attended the students’ presentation. It was a memorable experience for all of us," Hasan said.   

Barger will serve as a Fulbright Specialist in mathematics education and creative problem solving at Trakya University in Turkey.

“For almost 20 years I have been teaching a course in creative problem solving that is designed to help students, especially pre-service and in-service teachers, develop the ability to look at problems from different perspectives,” Barger said. “This allows them to move beyond the traditional answers to real world problems and problems in the classroom, to new answers and approaches that are significantly different from the common practice in today’s classrooms.”

Barger will be working with participants in workshops to apply creative problem solving techniques to challenges in their daily lives.

The Fulbright Program, which aims to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries, is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government. Hasan and Barger are looking forward to collaborating with scholars and students abroad.