Nine UCLA faculty receive Fulbright research awards

Nine UCLA faculty receive Fulbright research awards

By Jennifer Mukai

Science wasn’t the only force that compelled biology Professor
Kenneth Nagy to travel halfway around the world to Morocco.

"I did have more personal motivations," he said. "I wanted to
see the Sahara; as a desert biologist, I’ve felt incomplete without
experiencing the largest desert on earth. I also (wanted the
chance) to explore the world’s religions."

And while the continuing progress of science remained his
primary interest in making the journey, he did not miss the
opportunity to body surf the North Atlantic coast of Africa once
there.

Nagy is only one of nine UCLA faculty recipients of the 1994-95
Fulbright Award, a research grant annually conferred upon cutting
edge scholars from around the world.

The other UCLA recipients include Professor Kathleen Dracup of
the School of Nursing, Network Administrator William Eldridge of
the Cognitive Science Research Program, Professor Donald
Erlenkotter of the department of management, Professor Edward
Keenan of the department of linguistics, Professor Emeritus Jorge
Preloran of the department of film and television, Professor
Michael Storper of the department of urban planning, Associate
Professor Edward Telles of the department of sociology, and
lecturer Wilfried Voge of the department of Germanic languages.

This year, UCLA ranks fifth in the nation among universities
receiving the award, following Penn State (13), New York University
(12), Indiana University (11) and Cornell (10).

Nagy, who spent the month of July studying the ecology and
physiology of Moroccan lizards, has already returned from overseas.
Along with a colleague from the University of Cadi Ayyad in
Morocco, he has developed a predictive equation which can be
applied to questions facing environmental science today.

"With it," he said, "we can measure the food intake an animal
requires. We can then use this information, for example, to
determine the size of an area needed (for a wildlife
conservation)."

Preloran shares Nagy’s fascination with desert regions,
especially those of his native Argentina, and spent the last six
months at the University of Buenos Aires. There he conducted
research for a book he is writing on Patagonia, a semi-desert
region.

The book will be based on a seven-hour documentary he filmed two
years ago, which took six years to complete.

"Patagonia is absolutely fascinating, because it is one of the
most remote regions of the world, but hasn’t yet been explored
much," he said. "There, you can find indigenous petroglyphs
(paintings and etchings on rocks), petrified wood and all kinds of
fossils dating back from the Paleozoic era. Patagonia exemplifies
400 million years of life."

Some of the other Fulbright recipients are still scattered
around the globe, lecturing and conducting research. Dracup is
currently at the University of Sydney, studying why people with
symptoms of heart attack delay in seeking medical help. She plans
to compare her findings to those found in patients in the United
States, and hopes to discover whether the factors involved are
culturally influenced or universal.

Erlenkotter, at Kathmandu University in Nepal, is lecturing and
doing research on operations and development economics through the
African Regional Research Program.

At the Kiev Mohyla Academy in the Ukraine, Voge is training
instructors on how to teach German and English as second
languages.

Fulbright Awards are granted by the Washington-based Council for
International Exchange of Scholars, which administers the
scholarship program in cooperation with the United States
Information Agency.