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Ohio State Alumna Spends Fulbright Year Abroad
Ohio State Ph.D. alumna Kristin Risley's been busy.
After winning a Fulbright grant and marrying this summer, Risley made the long voyage from her apartment in Menomonie, WI, to meet her husband in Bergen, Norway, where Risley is teaching and conducting research in American Literature and American Studies at the University of Bergen. Risley reports back home that she's settled into her new routine and has become accustomed to a new academic system, which is quite different from the one she's used to.
"I am learning a lot about teaching and university systems here, so that is another part of my own education as a Fulbrighter," Risley wrote in a recent email. Norwegian university classes are set up so that each course has a lecture session and a small-group seminar session. Risley gives two-hour lectures and leads two discussion seminars, all of which require separate prep time. The course, American Literature and Culture, "covers a lot of ground…origins to the modern period in one semester!" Risley is also teaching Reading American Regions, a course that requires teaching three levels of students in the same classroom. Despite the hectic schedule, Risley has benefited already from her experience. "The teaching here has been very rewarding in that I have been able to work with majors and advanced students for the first time in my career; and I have some very dynamic and wonderful students from around the world (Latin America, Europe, Africa) so that has been a real pleasure."
Risley has also been learning a lot about her new home city of Bergen. Located in the heart of the west coast of Norway, surrounded by a dramatic landscape of mountains, rivers, and coastline, Bergen experiences a mild climate with lots of weather pattern. "We have already enjoyed several of the biggest, brightest rainbows I have ever seen, as it is not unusual to have sunshine and rain clouds in the same sky."
Risley's Fulbright grant is for the 2006-2007 academic school year, after which she will return to her position as assistant professor in the Department of English and Philosophy at University of Wisconsin-Stout.