UMM professor to attend Fulbright-Hays seminar this summer in India

MACHIAS – Randall Kindleberger, a University of Maine at Machias history professor, is set for her most interesting summer in years.

She learned of her selection earlier this month as one of 16 teachers and professors across the country who will take part in a Fulbright-Hays seminar in India.

Between June and August, the group will visit several Indian cities as they study “Women in Contemporary India.” The seminar will be given by the United States Educational Foundation in India on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education.

“It’s not the full Fulbright program where you do a year of research in a different country,” Kindleberger said this week. “I’m telling my friends it’s like Fulbright Light.”

The program will last just short of six weeks. The teachers start with one week in New Delhi, then travel to other parts of the vast country as they define the role and status of women in India.

Visits to schools, colleges, museums and rural areas will be mixed with academic study.

The opportunity comes at a time when the history department at UMM has expanded to three professors. Jeremy Rich arrived in January from Cabrini College in Philadelphia as an African specialist. Kay Kimball, the other longtime professor in the department, teaches American history courses.

The department’s world history survey course, which all three teach, is a mandatory two-semester class for all UMM students.

Kindleberger teaches a range of courses: history of the social sciences, history of the book, plus traditional European history, depending on the semester.

She is taking steps on her own to learn more about Asian history.

Two summers ago she studied ancient China and Rome in a National Endowment for the Humanities program at the University of California-Berkeley. In 2002, she studied in San Diego at an institute on Japan.

The Fulbright travel to India makes this program particularly compelling.

“This is the most exciting thing I’ve done so far, with the abroad component,” she said.

She made her application to the competitive program last October. She was asked to list her first three choices for where she could study.

“I got my first choice, India, although I wouldn’t have minded studying in Indonesia, either,” she said.

Kindleberger started as an adjunct teacher of history at UMM in 1980. She became a full-time tenured professor in 1997.

She did her undergraduate work at the University of Chicago, and received her doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Program participants are expected to use what they learn in India to “enhance international and cultural understanding” at home.

Next fall Kindleberger will take on a different research project as she takes a semester sabbatical.

“I’m thrilled for Randall but also for the department,” said Cynthia Huggins, UMM’s acting president. “Last summer Kay Kimball spent several weeks in Appalachia on a [National Endowment for the Humanities] program, followed by Randall doing this Fulbright thing.

“That combination speaks highly of the quality of our program.”

On Saturday, April 9, Kindleberger will be a guest at a presentation and potluck dinner by the university’s international club. Three UMM students from India will make food and speak about their country in a 5 p.m. gathering at Portside on campus.