Pair of UNLV professors land Fulbright grants

Christina Littlefield and Eric Leake

Monday, Nov. 1, 2004 | 11:22 a.m.

When UNLV finance professor Michael J. Sullivan first traveled to the Philippines as a Fulbright Scholar in 1998, he was going to teach finance and to research the Filipino stock exchange and the effects of government deregulation on the banking market.

Meeting his future wife, Adelfa, was just an added bonus.

The pair met when Sullivan lectured at the University of San Carlos in Cebu City, where Adelfa was a professor, Sullivan said. They dated for the rest of his eight-month stay in Manila and then Sullivan would take the 20-hour flight from Las Vegas to the Philippines every few months for them to "go on dates."

Married since 2000, Sullivan's latest Fulbright Scholar appointment will allow the couple to take their 2-year-old son Zachary for an extended reunion with his Filipino relatives, Sullivan said.

That also will allow Sullivan to continue his investigations into Filipino finances at the De La Salle University in Manila.

Sullivan is one of two UNLV professors to receive a Fulbright Scholar grant to visit and work at a foreign university this academic year. He'll leave with his family in May for a two-month stint studying the capital structure of Philippine corporations.

UNLV Boyd School of Law Professor Martin Geer has been working at the Indian Law Society Law College in Pune, India as a Fulbright Scholar since July.

With his wife and 16-year-old daughter in tow, Geer said he is primarily training Indian law students to provide legal education and legal aid to people in the country's rural villages, including providing dispute resolution services to areas where there are no formal courts. He is also coaching three international moot court teams and researching female prison conditions in India.

Geer said it has always been his dream to return to the country since he first visited India eight years ago as a Ford Foundation Fellow. One of the highlights of his trip so far, Geer said in an e-mail interview, was visiting Indian independence leader Mahatna Ghandi's former jail cell.

"I come here as a teacher, but see myself more as a student -- learning so much about the rest of the world and the world's largest democracy. 1.2 billion at last count," Geer said.

UNLV typically has one to two Fulbright Scholars a year, spokesman Gian Galassi said, but the highly competitive grants are a still major honor for the university.

Geer's appointment to India for the semester will provide a boost to the law school's reputation, Dean Richard Morgan said.

"Fulbright awards are very competitive and it's very prestigious to have a faculty member compete successfully for one," Morgan said, calling the awards a "big deal in the educational community."

Geer and Sullivan are among some 800 American academics and professionals who will travel to institutions in roughly 140 countries as Fulbright Scholars this year. Both UNLV professors had international experience prior to being named Fulbright Scholars.

Sullivan said the Fulbright program allows him to conduct research he wouldn't be able to do on his own, as well as experience what it is like to teach and work in another culture.

"Fulbright Scholars gives me a lot of access to places I wouldn't have otherwise," Sullivan said, including introductions to universities and other researchers, as well as access to officials in Filipino banking, the Filipino securities commission and the stock exchange.

The Fulbright Scholar Program was founded in 1946 and is administered by the State Department and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.