Hunter Visiting Fulbright Scholar In Germany

Date: 4/30/07
Contact: Eric Jome

Gary Hunter is looking forward to teaching German students about American retail businesses, and to learning more about retail businesses in Europe. Hunter, a professor in Illinois State University’s Marketing Department, will be a visiting Fulbright Scholar at Paderborn University in Paderborn, Germany in fall 2007.
Hunter will teach about retail systems as part of a lecturing and research grant through the Fulbright Program. His teaching will focus on strategy, financial analysis and issues of consumer behavior in a retail environment. In addition to teaching the retail course, Hunter will conduct research on German retail markets and consumer empowerment.

The Fulbright Scholar visit to Paderborn will be the culmination of a very busy year for Hunter. In mid May, he will lead a group of students from Illinois State’s College of Business on the first part of their summer study abroad trip to England and Belgium. During June, he will teach a summer course on retail systems at Paderborn University. That teaching assignment, separate from the Fulbright Program, is a result of an invitation he received from the marketing faculty at Paderborn. Hunter visited that institution in May 2006 as part of a faculty exchange and began an academic collaboration with the department’s faculty.

“Teaching the summer course in retail systems at Paderborn will be an excellent warm-up for the Fulbright visit in the fall,” said Hunter. “It will allow me to tailor the course content to fit into a German context. The Fulbright Scholar visit will give me an expanded opportunity to teach about American retail business practices, while learning a great deal about retail markets in Germany. That type of cross-cultural business study will help to enrich my teaching when I return to Illinois State in the spring of 2008.”

Hunter is one of approximately 800 U.S. faculty and professionals traveling abroad through the Fulbright Scholar Program. The Fulbright Program is America’s flagship international education exchange program and is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. The program was established in 1946 under legislation introduced by the late Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, with the purpose of building mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the rest of the world. The program operates in more than 150 countries.

For more information about the Fulbright Program visit http://exchanges.state.gov