Students and faculty interested in the international exchange program can obtain more information during today’s Fulbright Interest Day Seminar.

The Division of International Programs will hold the event from 3 to 4:30 p.m. in the Heritage Room of the Holmes Student Center.

NIU faculty who have held senior scholar Fulbright fellowships will be available to share their experiences with interested students and faculty. Kenton Clymer chair of the Department of History, and Lemuel Watson, chair of the Department of Counseling, Adult and Higher Education, will be in attendance.

The grants give students and faculty hundreds of opportunities to learn, teach and conduct research in more than 140 countries.

“This is such a fabulous opportunity where a student that wants to gain an in-depth knowledge of another country can do so while teaching and learning,” said Deborah Pierce, executive director of the Division of International Programs.

The exchange program is highly competitive and this year NIU had a record number of students recommended for Fulbright awards.

“This year we had a record number of eight applicants,” Pierce said. “We also had a record number of three that got past the first cut.”

The program is exceptional for students such as French majors who might want to teach English in France. This would give the student the opportunity to work directly with the French, while enhancing his or her own studies of French as well, Pierce said.

The Fulbright committee looks for students who present a clear and organized concept for the project which they want to work on in another country. They also look for students who are mature, internationally open, work well in a diverse community and have awareness, both intellectually and emotionally, of themselves, Pierce said.

Several NIU faculty members currently have senior scholar Fulbright fellowships.

Included is Jeffrey Brown in the College of Law, who teaches comparative law and conducts research in Russia. Eric Jones, an assistant history professor, is working on a 10-month project in Malaysia at the National University of Malaysia and Doris Macdonald, an English professor, teaches at Vilnius University, the oldest university in Lithuania.