UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Kai Schafft, professor of education (educational leadership and rural sociology) at Penn State, has been selected as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar for 2023-24 for Romania. This is Schafft’s second Fulbright U.S. Scholar award. His first was in Hungary in 2014-15.
Fulbright Scholar Awards are prestigious and competitive fellowships that provide unique opportunities for scholars to teach and conduct research abroad. The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program is the U.S. government's flagship international educational exchange program.
“Kai’s research, both in the U.S. and abroad, examines the relationship between social inequality, spatial inequality, rural development, rural poverty, student transiency and the role of schools in rural community development. That all ties in directly with the goals of our college strategic plan,” said Kim Lawless, dean of the College of Education at Penn State. “I am thrilled that he will be able to continue his vitally important work through this second Fulbright award.”
In 2014-15, Schafft spent half a year as a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.
“It was an amazing experience that changed the course of my life both personally and professionally,” Schafft said. “I spent my time there working with a young Roma scholar and conducting fieldwork looking at the role of Roma minority self-governance in the context of rising right-wing nationalist political movements at the local level.
This second award is a research and teaching Fulbright that will have Schafft spending the entire 2023-24 academic year in Romania at the Transilvania University of Brasov in the Carpathian Mountains.
“It’s amazing to get this second Fulbright,” Schafft said. “The work I hope to do will extend the earlier work I did in Hungary, teaching and doing research on educational access for Roma students at the K-12 level in both urban and rural contexts. Roma students in rural Romania and elsewhere in the region face a kind of ‘double jeopardy’ because of anti-Roma discrimination more broadly, and rural-urban spatial inequalities in education and poverty status.”
Schafft has had connections with the Transilvania University of Brasov for several years, including developing a Memorandum of Understanding between the Transilvania University of Brasov and Penn State.
“It’s wonderful to see these connections come to fruition and to be able to continue to build on the work I’ve done in Central and Eastern Europe over the last number of years. Being a Fulbright scholar is an incredible honor and having been awarded two Fulbrights now is something I am deeply grateful for,” Schafft said.
Independent research and participant surveys confirm that Fulbright exchange experiences lead to greater international co-publication, continued international exchange, and stronger cross-cultural communication skills.
The benefits of a Fulbright Scholar Award extend beyond the individual recipient. Fulbright scholars are able to leverage their connections in their host institutions not only for their own professional development, but also for the benefit of their students and their programs.
“We are confident that Dr. Schafft’s engagement abroad will engage the College of Education's research and partnerships with international collaborators beyond this specific project.” said Greg Kelly, senior associate dean for research in the College of Education.
The Fulbright program was established in 1946 by Sen. J. William Fulbright and is sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the Department of State. The program celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2021.