FACULTY ON FULBRIGHTS

Britton and Lennertz study and teach abroad

Jim Lennertz guided Matt Parrott ’03 in senior honors research on post-Sept. 11 immigration cases.

At Panama’s Universidad Especializada de las Americas, which offers specialized degrees for health professionals, Britton, a neuroscientist, is currently doing research aimed at identifying the proportion of women in senior scientific positions at research and postsecondary education institutions, as well as senior decision-making bodies. The study will attempt to predict the likelihood of women obtaining and sustaining positions at high levels in science and technology.

She is also teaching a seminar on gender issues relating to science at the University of Panama. She has organized a series of lectures for her students (mostly women studying nursing, medicine, psychology, and social sciences) in which local women scientists discuss challenges the students will face in their fields and strategies for achieving their goals.

Gabrielle Britton mentored Kristopher Klein ’04 in a study of the effects of Ritalin on lab rats.

“The experience of stepping outside the laboratory has provided me with a unique perspective on these issues,” she says.

Like Britton, Lennertz is an active mentor of Lafayette students’ research projects. He also has coordinated many internships providing students work experience with government officials. Beginning in February, he will teach a course in comparative public policy at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and conduct research for a book he is writing on constitutional politics in representative democracy.

Lennertz taught and studied in Grenoble, France, under a Fulbright in 1981.

“Since my previous Fulbright, I have come to increasingly appreciate the lessons of cross-cultural comparison,” he says. “New insights are likely to come from stepping away from our nation’s long-established and unexamined premises. Central and Eastern Europe’s distinct cultures, institutions, and experiences— historic and recent—provide an excellent opportunity to do that. Indeed, current issues with respect to the structures and processes of governance of the European Union are extremely relevant to my interest in political representation.”