Fulbright in Portugal

by Kent Chamberlin

Throughout my life I've heard stories about families who have picked up and moved to another country for an extended period of time. I had always been envious of those people, because such an adventure seemed like a great opportunity to expand one’s horizons and gain a greater appreciation for life. So, when I received a Fulbright grant to go to the University of Aveiro in Portugal, I was really thrilled. But, it's one thing to imagine going on a foreign adventure, and quite another thing to actually carry it out. For starters, it takes a lot of preparation and planning to move a family of 5 across the ocean for an 8½ month stay, particularly when you have to get your house ready for renters.

Perhaps the biggest adjustment for us in moving to Aveiro was not so much a change in national culture and language, but rather the change in lifestyle that occurs when moving from a rural/suburban environment to a city environment. I think that we would have had much of the same shock had we moved to an American city. But, after we did overcome that shock, we were able to enjoy many of the advantages of city life. For example, everything we needed was within walking distance of our apartment. We also enjoyed the fact that Portugal has a much lower cost of living than the States.

Because most of the people I worked with spoke English fluently, language was not a major adjustment for me. We did have to use our "pigeon Portuguese" when shopping or traveling, and it's very fortunate that the Portuguese people are so forgiving of people who slaughter their language. Even though we never became fluent in Portuguese, we were always able to get what we needed in stores and restaurants. It's amazing how well the "point and grunt" method will work in a pinch.

My Fulbright assignment was at the Departamento de Electrónica e Telecomunicações at the University of Aveiro, which is located about an hour south of Porto by train. My duties included teaching, giving presentations, and working with graduate students and faculty on research relating to my own expertise, which is antennas and computational electromagnetics. Many of you will be gratified to hear that Maxwell’s equations are just as popular in Europe as they are here. Actually, a good number of their students were interested in electromagnetics because of the greater emphasis on wireless systems in Europe. In many important respects, Europe is way ahead of the United States in the use of wireless communication. I was able to work with faculty and students on a number of projects, and I am hopeful that this work will lead to either future collaboration or publications.

There was also interest in my past work with distance education. As some of you may know, I have been closely associated with the Far View distance education program here at UNH. The University of Aveiro has their own department dealing with the preparation of materials for, and the delivery of, distance education programs. Interestingly, the head of that program is a former Electrical Engineering professor. I gave a number of presentations for that department, and I was involved in planning and executing a conference concentrating on mediated learning. Having been involved with distance education providers in Europe, my sense is that the United States is better positioned to become a leader in this arena. I say this because there appears to be a greater cultural barrier to using technology in education in many parts of Europe than there is here. Furthermore, some of their programs that I did learn about do not appear to be nearly as robust as the programs that I am aware of here.

Having had this overseas experience will certainly affect the way that I teach in the future. For one thing, I will have a lot more empathy for the foreign students that I occasionally have in class. I will also have a much greater appreciation for different learning styles. Perhaps the most significant experiences that I had that will impact my teaching was brought about by courses that I took while on sabbatical, one of which was a traditional course, and others were taken over the Internet. The traditional course I took was a Portuguese language class involving 21 students from 11 different countries, and was taught by an experienced and talented instructor. In comparison to the Internet courses I took, I found the Portuguese class to be frustrating because of the differences in backgrounds of the students in class. Because of their past experiences with different languages, the areas where students required help varied widely. As a consequence, the class moved relatively slowly yet many of the students’ needs were not addressed. I realize that this type of problem exists in the classes I teach, where the differing backgrounds of the students make it difficult to set a comfortable pace for the majority of students. Web-based courses tend to avoid this problem since they are self-paced. I am now working to incorporate some aspects of self-pacing into my own courses so that students can learn more efficiently and effectively.

Now that our adventure is over, my family and I are very happy to be back. New England is a wonderful place to live, and now I can say with confidence that there are a few other places in the world that I would rather live. Despite some of the challenges we encountered, I am very glad we went, and I would encourage others to take similar adventures if they have the opportunity. We did maintain a web site during our stay, and if you would like to see some pictures and get more insights into our stay there, you might want to check it out at: http://pubpages.unh.edu/~kentc