Nagarajan Ramamoorthy, an associate professor of management at the University of Houston-Victoria, has received a prestigious Fulbright award to lecture and conduct research in Bulgaria for five months.

 

Nagarajan Ramamoorthy

“This visit will help me have a first-hand understanding of the transformation taking place in Eastern Europe since the fall of the Soviet Union, and I can bring that back and share it with my students,” he said.

 

Ramamoorthy, who also is the UHV Faculty Senate president for 2007-2008, found out Saturday through a letter from the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board that he was an award recipient.

 

As a Fulbright scholar, Ramamoorthy joins more than 286,000 participants chosen for their academic merit and leadership potential who have been in the international educational exchange program since its inception in 1946. The program is administered by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs as a way to increase understanding between U.S. citizens and people in other countries.

 

“I am so pleased that Dr. Ramamoorthy is being recognized internationally for his outstanding academic leadership,” UHV President Tim Hudson said. “This is a benchmark achievement for any scholar and will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for him to share his knowledge of business management and to learn about another culture and country.”

 

UHV’s last Fulbright scholar was Meledath Damodaran, a professor and coordinator of computer science, information systems and math, who received an award in 1992 to lecture in India. In addition, Hudson won Fulbright scholarships to Mexico and Germany in the 1980s, and Bud Fairlamb, a professor of humanities and interdisciplinary studies, received a Fulbright-Hayes scholarship in 1984 to study in Columbia.

 

“I’m very happy for Dr. Ramamoorthy,” Damodaran said. “It’s an energizing experience that can influence higher education programs in the United States and abroad in positive ways.”

 

Ramamoorthy will be in Bulgaria from October to February teaching and conducting research at one or more universities that have yet to be decided. His research interest is in cross-cultural management, so he hopes to work on research in that area while he is there, he said. He also would like to talk to Bulgarian professors about collaborating on research projects after he returns to the United States.

 

“The UHV School of Business Administration aspires to be a leader in global management education,” Dean Charles Bullock said. “Dr. Ramamoorthy’s Fulbright is a significant step toward attaining such status as a global leader.”

 

Ramamoorthy said he has never been to Bulgaria. He will be able to lecture in English but plans on learning conversational Bulgarian. He also will travel to Tryavna, Bulgaria, for two weeks in August to attend the Fulbright International Summer Institute as a way to find out more about the academic and cultural environment of the country.

 

Ramamoorthy came to UHV in 2002 as an assistant professor of management and was promoted to an associate professor in 2005. He also was chairman of the Management and Marketing Department in the School of Business Administration from 2002 to 2005. In 2006, he was a finalist for UHV’s Enron Teaching Excellence Award.

 

He is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology and the Irish Journal of Management. In 1998, he was awarded the Emerald Citation of Excellence for an article he wrote that appeared in the journal Human Relations. He received the Southwestern Academy of Management Best Reviewer Award in 2006.