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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 10, 2004
CONTACT: Roland Ruiz, Director of Public Relations, St. Philip's College, 210/531-4851

ST. PHILIP’S COLLEGE, SAN ANTONIO COLLEGE TO HOST VISITING FULBRIGHT SPECIALIST

Two local community colleges -- St. Philip’s College and San Antonio College – will jointly host a visiting scholar from the country of Kazakhstan this fall under a new Fulbright Program designed to promote global understanding of Muslim society and culture. The new initiative, called Fulbright Visiting Specialists: Direct Access to the Muslim World, will bring Dr. Gulnara Oiratovna Abikeyeva, a native of Almaty, Kazakhstan, where she is a journalist with Megalopolis Newspaper, to San Antonio for a six-week residency shared by the two colleges of the Alamo Community College District. Dr. Abikeyeva is scheduled to be in San Antonio from Oct. 24 through Dec. 5.

The Fulbright Visiting Specialist Program is a new initiative that enables American colleges, universities and community colleges to enrich their international programs and courses of study by providing opportunities for direct access and intensive exposure to specialists from Islamic communities and cultures in the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and several countries in Central Asia, Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. While in the United States, the Fulbright Visiting Specialists engage institutions and communities in dialogue, learning and mutual understanding, as well as the development of courses, programs, exchange activities and relationships. The Specialists present lectures or short courses, team-teach with American colleagues or assist in program and curriculum development in colleges and universities, and speak to community groups, service clubs, and religious and school groups.

"The diversity of students and programs make community colleges such as ours a great match for the Visiting Fulbright Specialists Program," said St. Philip’s College President Angie S. Runnels, Ph.D. "This is a distinguished program that provides us with an opportunity to enhance the learning experiences of our students with a truly global perspective across the academic spectrum."

Dr. Abikeyeva is the second Fulbright Scholar to be hosted by St. Philip’s College. During the academic year 2002-2003, Dr. Osvaldo Barreneche, associate professor of history at the National University of La Plata, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, taught humanities with an emphasis on Latin American history and culture. During her visit, Dr. Abikeyeva will provide lectures and show films at both St. Philip’s College and San Antonio College to classes in World History, Humanities, Psychology, Sociology, Journalism, Art Appreciation, Art History, and Geography. She will also meet with faculty to explore and discuss pedagogy and content, and the differences and similarities between her experiences and the local community college experience.

St. Philip’s College, together with San Antonio College, was one of 33 institutions competitively chosen nationwide to participate in the program sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the United States Department of State and administered by the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES) in Washington, DC.

Dr. Abikeyeva holds degrees in film studies from the Institute of Cinemaphotography in Moscow, and the Kazakh Academy of Arts in Almaty. In 2001, she spent a year at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, as a Fulbright Scholar. She has also lectured on Central Asia and its cultural history as expressed in cinema at Harvard University, Yale University, the University of Pittsburgh, Bates College in Maine, and Stetson University in Florida. In 2003 she published a book, The Heart of the World: Films from Central Asia. She is married and the mother of two daughters. Her homeland of Kazakhstan is a former Soviet Republic, which has been independent since 1991. The country of 15 million is divided with about half the population Sunni Muslims and the other half, Russian Orthodox. Her hometown, Almaty, with 1.5 million inhabitants, is the largest city.

As Dr. Abikeyeva wrote in her Fulbright application: "I discovered a great interest from faculty and students in Central Asian culture, traditions, outlook, religion, and everyday life. Surely, a lot of information is possible to find in books, newspapers, and websites, but people need to know not only academic things. To understand how people think, feel, and what values they have, I think cinemaphotography is the best way of understanding people…Visual information gives us more about everyday life, surroundings, and the emotions of people."

Established in 1946 under legislation introduced by former Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the United States Department of State. The Fulbright Scholar Program is administered by the Council for International Exchange of Scholars in Washington, D.C. Since the establishment of the Program, 43,000 Fulbright Visiting Scholars have conducted research or taught in U.S. universities and more than 41,000 Fulbright U.S. Scholars have engaged in similar activities abroad. Currently, the Program operates in 140 countries worldwide in order to promote "mutual understanding between people of the United States and the people of other countries of the world."

St. Philip’s College and San Antonio College are two of the four colleges that comprise the Alamo Community College District, which serves more than 50,000 students from the greater Bexar County and surrounding areas.