UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Laura Cruz, associate research professor at the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence, recently completed a Fulbright Specialist trip to the University of Prishtina in Kosovo as part of a project on publishing in teaching and learning.
Cruz left for Kosovo in November and worked with faculty and graduate students at the Faculty of Medicine (the university’s medical college) to further their capacity for teaching and learning research. During her five weeks in the country, Cruz taught classes on teaching and learning scholarship and developed educational materials in English, which were then translated to Albanian. She is also working with local faculty to establish a teaching and learning journal in the region.
The visit was intended not just to advance individual research projects, Cruz said, but to increase the institutional capacity of the Faculty of Medicine to serve as a significant voice in global medical education.
Education in Kosovo, like in the U.S., was massively disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, said Merita Berisha, associate professor at the University of Prishtina, and Cruz’s host during the Fulbright Specialist project. She first met Cruz during the pandemic, in an interview for quality assessment and trainings organized by the University of Prishtina. Berisha then asked if Cruz would be willing to give lectures to master’s level students on the subject of research in education and serve as co-teacher in the school’s Master Education in Health Care program. The two worked together to craft a proposal to the Fulbright Specialist program, which was accepted, and Cruz was off to Kosovo for a short, but busy, trip abroad.
Berisha said Cruz’s time in Kosovo was highly valuable for her and the students.
“It was a pleasure to see the excitement in the eyes of the students and their curiosity towards building research capacity,” she said.
Berisha explained that research in education and evidence-based medicine go hand-in-hand.
“In addition to medical practice, as a teacher, research helps us to adapt teaching methods to the individual needs of students in order to arouse curiosity to acquire research skills as soon as possible, to involve them as partners in joint research and to ensure that they are aware of the importance of evidence-based decision making that affects individual, group and societal progress,” she said.
Among the flurry of work in her five weeks in Kosovo, Cruz also helped to establish research writing groups, served as an instructor for an educational research course, described how to involve students as research partners and developed assessment and evaluation plans at the doctoral program level.
Cruz is also working with Berisha and her colleagues at the University of Prishtina to establish an online journal operated by the National Institute of Public Health of Kosovo.
Cruz said her Fulbright Specialist assignment was an excellent chance to observe teaching and learning in different contexts. She said there is a spirit of resilience among the faculty at University of Prishtina, many of whom earned their degrees as the university went underground in the 1990s during the Kosovo War.
“There are so many things we can learn from them,” she said. “Who better to teach the rest of the world about resilience in the face of unexpected chaos than a country that has endured as much as they have?”
There was an extra bit of pride for Cruz as she continued a family legacy of earning Fulbright awards. Her father moved the family to Belgium for one year when he earned a Fulbright Scholarship, and Cruz’s grandfather earned two during his career. This was also the first Fulbright award for the Schreyer Institute.
Cruz is one of the 400 U.S. citizens who share their expertise with institutions abroad each year, according to the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, which administers the Fulbright programs. More than 400,000 students, scholars, teachers, artists and scientists have earned a Fulbright award since the program was established in 1946.
The Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence is a part of Penn State Undergraduate Education.