Kevin A. Stein, a professor and director of the Master of Arts in Professional Communication program at Southern Utah University, was presented a Fulbright Specialist Award. This accolade sponsors a trip to the University of Murcia in Spain, where Stein will collaborate with their communication department.
The competitive Fulbright program provides grants for specialists in professional fields to carry out international research funded by the U.S. State Department. The program has been recently altered to select Fulbright Specialists for shorter trips that range from 14 to 42 days, which is what Stein will be doing in Spain at the University of Murcia.
One of Stein’s main contacts at the University of Murcia is the director of their master’s program. Stein looks forward to collaborating with him on graduate program development and beginning research projects that they can carry out when he returns to Cedar City. He will be doing this while teaching communication courses for the University of Murcia.
Stein has also been invited to lecture at the University of Jaen and the University of Catalonia during his trip.
Ten years ago, Stein took his family on a sabbatical to China, where he taught communication for an entire year. During that experience, Stein noticed a lot of cultural differences in both students and colleagues.
“You don’t know what you don’t know until you get there,” He said. “You make a lot of mistakes even though you are well-meaning.”
Because of that experience, he knows that it will be a challenge adapting to a new culture, but it is a challenge that he is excited to take on. Although Stein has traveled internationally for work before, Spain brings new experiences for him to learn from.
“I’m really looking forward to teaching classes over there because, when I was in China, the students were so much different than they were in America,” Stein said. “Eventually, I figured out how to adapt to that environment, and I expect that the Spanish students are going to be different in a lot of ways, too.”
The application process for the Fulbright Specialist Award consists of essays centered around the importance of international relations in research and what makes Stein a good fit for the program.
“That’s probably one of the reasons why I waited a while before I applied,” Stein admitted. “I wanted to make sure that I was at a place in my career where I could contribute a lot in terms of collaborating on research or teaching classes for someone else’s program or doing curriculum development.”
Throughout the years, Stein has become a prominent member of the professional communication field, acquiring many awards and publications. His research emphases are image repair, attack rhetoric, apologia and his own theory, antapologia, which he defines as the “response to apologia.”
During his time in Spain, Stein will have the opportunity to share his knowledge with other field experts as well as students.
Stein believes it is important for people to learn proper communication, whether that be constructing messages or evaluating them, because it’s applicable in many aspects of life. “It transcends all the different disciplines, and it’s important for our times,” he said.
Learn more about SUU’s communication department on their website.
Story: Heather Turner
Photo courtesy of SUU
Editor: Anna Mower
news@suunews.net
