CMC Prof. Jennifer Feitosa has joined an elite cadre, having recently been recognized with a prestigious U.S. Scholar Fulbright grant.
“The CMC community is incredibly proud of Prof. Feitosa,” said Heather Antecol, CMC’s Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty. “This award is a career-changer for her, as earning a Fulbright will allow Prof. Feitosa to expand her research and further develop her teaching. In addition, CMC will benefit from the valuable network that she will be building.”
Fulbright Scholars receive a grant to teach and/or conduct research in a foreign country. The program started in 1946 to promote goodwill through cultural exchange among students, educators and professionals. A total of 36 CMC faculty members have been named Fulbright Scholars, including most recently Gretchen Gilbert and Albert L. Park.
For Feitosa, who has long dreamed of becoming “a citizen of the world,” this award means that she is a little closer to fulfilling that dream, as she heads to Madrid for the 2022-23 academic year.
Feitosa, who is an assistant professor of Psychology and director of CMC’s METRICS lab, will deepen her research and teaching, which is focused on workplace diversity, teamwork, training, and measurement.
“It is a lot easier to appreciate and understand people when we immerse ourselves in their world, culture, and practice perspective-taking,” she said. “My time in Madrid will not only enhance my professional identity related to understanding diverse teams but also personally, as I form relationships with people in other parts of the world.”
Spain, she explains, is an ideal site for her work, given that is a leading country for expatriates, who comprise 15% of the workforce.
“Teaching and researching abroad in Spain, a country whose workforce is significantly impacted by increased diversity in workplaces in general, and teams in particular, will contribute to the development of evidence-based practices to support the pressing needs of belonging,” said Feitosa. “Moreover, these practices need to be developed from cultural- and linguistic-diverse perspectives as well.”
Feitosa said she was grateful for the support and advice from Prof. Park, a four-time recipient of Fulbright Fellowships for Research, as she assembled her own Fulbright proposal.
“Prof. Feitosa had a strong research proposal and a dynamic record of scholarship that made her a fantastic applicant for this prestigious fellowship,” said Park, who is the Bank of America Associate Professor of Pacific Basin Studies at CMC.
“I am confident that Prof. Feitosa will gain so much from this Fulbright experience, especially building networks of collaboration that will further enhance her research and help her to break new grounds in her fields of study,” he said, noting that his Fulbright fellowships allowed him to conduct vital research to write his book project on environmentalism in South Korea.
In addition to working on her research project, “Integrative Team Belonging Training: An Inclusive Research and Teaching Perspective” (originally co-developed with a CGU Prof. M. Glória González-Morales) at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M). Feitosa will teach an Organizational Behavior course to MBA students, and lead case studies.
Upon her return to CMC, Feitosa hopes that her students will be inspired by her Fulbright experience to embark on their own overseas learning opportunities and that she’ll be able to bring what she’ll learn in Madrid back to her classroom and METRICS research lab.
Feitosa, who is originally from Brazil, understands the value of exploring diverse cultures. She is trilingual (Portuguese, English, and Spanish), and spent time during her high school years in a small town in Minnesota, eventually earning her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. from the University of Central Florida.
Casting an eye to the future, Feitosa said she would love to spend research time incorporating other cultural diversity components to teams. “There is still a big divide in our western/eastern as well as northern/southern knowledge, thus a continuous push for debunking some of our scientific findings is necessary,” she said.