Fulbright Fellowship will help UNLV prof to teach in Germany

Kris Hill

Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2000 | 10:04 a.m.

Craig Walton contemplated a picture on his computer screen of a beautiful German town bathed in sunlight and surrounded by forested hills.

"That's obviously a spring shot," he said. "It's probably raining there right now."

Early next year he'll know, because he'll be there.

With the help of a Fulbright Fellowship, he will be teaching philosophy in Jena, Germany.

Walton is a professor of philosophy and ethics at UNLV. He is also the founder and director of UNLV's Institute of Ethics and Policy Studies and has been teaching those subjects since 1964.

He speaks six languages -- including German -- with varying degrees of competency, he said. His expertise earned him an invitation to teach at Friedrich Schiller University of Jena next spring. To pay for it, he had to apply for grant money: He decided to try for a Fulbright Fellowship.

In 1945 newly elected Sen. J. William Fulbright, D-Ark., proposed the program that would fund international exchanges of professors to countries such as Germany.

Walton said he had to jump through some hoops to earn the Fulbright. He had to pass tests in reading, writing and speaking German, get letters of reference from his boss and other scholars and submit a copy of the invitation to teach at the German university.

He'll begin teaching on March 15 but plans to arrive in late February to adjust to the language.

While in Germany he will teach courses on American philosophy in both English and German and help the university revamp its curriculum and update its library.

"The faculty will want to argue over that," Walton said. "But that's good."

While looking at the photo of Jena (pronounced Yay-nuh) on the town's official website, he was also translating aloud the German titles of the links. As he jumped between English and German, his voice would go from soft-spoken in his native language to much louder in German -- so much so that it echoed in his cramped office and into the hallway.

Walton's office is cramped because half of it is books, everything one would expect in a philosopher's office: dozens of books on Plato and Aristotle and other philosophers and books he's authored.

Currently on sabbatical, he is working on another book.

Walton won't have much time to write while overseas because in addition to his role at the university, he'll be working with businesses in Jena on ethics issues.

"I'm going to have a full schedule," he said. "All the noodles I can eat."

When he returns from Germany in July, he will prepare to return to UNLV to finish his manuscript.

And he'll go back to his usual duties: speaking, teaching, writing, editing, advising and commenting on political ethics. He hopes to work one day a week on his book, which he would like to finish by early 2002.