Wilson receives Fulbright Grant to Slovenia

SAN MARCOS — Steven Wilson, MFA, a professor of English at Texas State University-San Marcos, has received a Fulbright Senior Specialists grant in U.S.
Studies-Literature to teach in Slovenia.

The Fulbright grant will take Wilson to the University of Maribor, in Maribor, Slovenia, for three weeks beginning in May. Wilson will repeat the trip in 2005.

“I think the specialist program is a great idea,” Wilson said. “For a lot of faculty, the idea of leaving for just one semester is impossible due to their regular university workload. This opens up the Fulbright program to a lot of people who couldn’t even consider it before.”

No stranger to Slovenia, Wilson spent five months in the spring of 2002 lecturing in American Literature at the University of Maribor as a Fulbright Scholar. In February 2003, 14 of his former students from Maribor visited Texas State, a trip organized by the Texas State University International Office and the Department of English as well as the U.S. Embassy in Slovenia.

Wilson said he will be teaching American Literature classes once again, as well as meeting with students nearing graduation to discuss their “Diploma papers,” which is equivalent to a short thesis. He will also give some presentations across the border in Austria, and discuss American Studies programs there.

“They wanted me to come back. They had to initiate this on their end and set it in motion,” Wilson said. “Of course, I’m very flattered they asked me to come back. From a personal point of view, this is an opportunity to continue some things I’d started when I was there before.”

The University of Maribor is located in Maribor, Slovenia, a city of 150,000, and is one of only two universities in the country. Slovenia itself is a tiny European nation bordered by Italy to the west and Croatia to the east on the Aegean Sea.

The Fulbright Senior Specialists Program offers two- to six-week grants to leading U.S. academics and professionals to support curricular and faculty development and institutional planning at academic institutions in 140 countries around the world.

Created to complement the traditional Fulbright Scholar Program, which was started in 1946, the Senior Specialists Program aims at increasing the number of faculty and professionals who have the opportunity to go abroad on a Fulbright.