Contact: Kenneth Billings
STARKVILLE, Miss.--A Mississippi State administrator is spending the month of December representing the United States and the university in Japan.
Stephen Cottrell, assistant director of the Office of International Services, is a J. William Fulbright Senior Specialist Scholar at the University of Nagasaki. In addition to leading lectures, he is participating in seminars on cultural geography's role in international higher education program development.
In 2007, he made a similar visit to Northern Thailand and Cambodia as part of the Fulbright program.
Cottrell holds a Mississippi State doctorate in education and currently is completing a master's degree in geosciences at the university. He joined the MSU staff in 1994 as the international student adviser, and has taught part-time in the geosciences department for more than a decade.
Previously, Cottrell received a bachelor's degree in cultural geography from the University of South Alabama and a master's in linguistics from the University of Northern Iowa.
Fulbright Senior Specialist grants are an extension of the traditional Fulbright awards given to U.S. scholars and professionals. They provide ongoing academic and professional collaborations with foreign institutions on curriculum and faculty development, institutional assessment and planning, and a variety of other issues.
Established by Congress in 1946 and named for the Arkansas senator that led in its creation, the Fulbright Program is the flagship international education effort of the U.S. government.
For more information about Mississippi State University, see http://www.msstate.edu/.