POTSDAM – Dr. Edwin J. Portugal, professor of strategic and global management at SUNY Potsdam, has been granted a Fulbright Senior Specialist Award by the U.S. Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

The grant award is for a period of five years, during which Dr. Portugal can spend from two to six weeks in up to three different host institutions overseas.

In 2010, Dr. Portugal has been invited by the Chancellor of the University of the Philippines at Diliman to visit for a six-week period from July 10 to Aug. 21.

As a Fulbright Senior Specialist, he will conduct seminars, facilitate workshops and lecture on the topics of leadership, strategic management and campus internationalization at the University of the Philippines. He will also give lectures on management and leadership to doctoral and MBA students.

“This appointment is a well-deserved recognition of Dr. Portugal’s expertise and experience in business administration education. I am pleased that he is able to assist colleagues at Filipino universities and represent SUNY Potsdam in this international initiative,” said Dr. Margaret E. Madden, provost and vice president for academic affairs.

Dr. Portugal teaches courses in strategic and global management, principles of leadership, and organizational behavior and ethics.

He was co-director of two previous U.S. Department of State grants to form campus internationalization partnerships with universities in Tunisia and in the Ukraine.

Dr. Portugal has presented papers at international conferences in Romania, Azerbaijan, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Ukraine. He has been invited to give lectures on leadership and management in Taiwan, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, the Philippines and Tunisia.

Dr. Portugal is one of over 400 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad this year through the Fulbright Specialist Program.

The Fulbright Specialist Program, created in 2000 to complement the traditional Fulbright Scholar Program, provides short-term academic opportunities to prominent U.S. faculty and professionals in support of curricular and faculty development and institutional planning at post secondary, academic institutions around the world.

The Fulbright Program, America’s flagship international educational exchange activity, is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Over its 60 years of existence, thousands of U.S. faculty and professionals have taught, studied, or conducted research abroad, and thousands of their counterparts from other countries have engaged in similar activities in the United States.

Over 285,000 emerging leaders in their professional fields have received Fulbright awards, including individuals who later became heads of government, Nobel Prize winners, and leaders in education, business, journalism, the arts and other fields.

Recipients of Fulbright Scholar awards are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement.

Among thousands of prominent Fulbright Scholar alumni are Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist; Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; Rita Dove, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, and Craig Barrett, chairman of the board of Intel Corporation.

Distinguished Fulbright Specialist participants include Mahmoud Ayoub, professor of religion at Temple University; Heidi Hartmann, president and CEO, Institute for Women's Policy Research; Percy R. Luney Jr., dean and professor, College of Law, Florida A&M University, and Emily Vargas-Barone, founder and executive director of the RISE Institute.

Dr. Portugal received his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Albany, his Master’s of Business Administration from the University of Detroit and his Bachelor of Science degree in psychology from the University of California at Davis.

He was elected to two terms as mayor of Rouses Point, N.Y. and is an avid hiker and mountain climber.