Stephenson Completes Fulbright Specialist Award Work in Vietnam

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Tran Thi My Hanh (left to right), Thida Win Ko Ko, Steve Stephenson and Barbara Stephenson

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — University of Arkansas Professor Steve Stephenson, through a Fulbright Specialist Award, spent two weeks in Vietnam in March presenting seminars, holding workshops and developing potential collaborative research opportunities.

Stephenson is a research professor in the department of biological sciences in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, and is regarded as one of the world’s leading authorities on a group of organisms known as myxomycetes, also known as slime molds.

While at Hanoi National University of Education, Stephenson presented a series of seminars to graduate and undergraduate students on subjects ranging from global patterns of biodiversity, high-latitude ecosystems, the ecology of tropical forests and mycology. In addition, he gave a workshop on scientific writing as it relates to grant proposals and papers for publication to faculty members at the university. He later met with individual faculty members and graduate students to discuss and/or review their manuscripts and grant proposals.

Stephenson also visited two national parks in northern Vietnam to observe first-hand conservation efforts in the country and later discussed possible collaborative research opportunities that might be established between faculty and students in Vietnam and their counterparts at the University of Arkansas.

During the second week of his visit, Stephenson was invited to make a special presentation relating to what is involved in writing successful grant proposals to personnel at the Vietnam Institute of Educational Sciences, also located in the city of Hanoi. The institute is the largest educational research organization in all of Vietnam.

He was accompanied to Vietnam by his wife Barbara, who is an instructor in the department of mathematical sciences at the U of A. Two former students from Southeast Asia — for whom Stephenson served as the external director for at least a portion of their graduate studies — visited him at Hanoi National University. Tran Thi My Hanh of from Vietnam and Thida Win Ko Ko of Myanmar have visited the University of Arkansas in the past, the former as a Fulbright Senior Scholar.