Don Scheese Receives Fulbright Award

Don Scheese, professor of English and environmental studies at Gustavus Adolphus College, has been awarded a Fulbright grant for the 2010-11 academic year.  Scheese will teach courses in American Studies in the Ukraine in the spring of 2011 during his year-long sabbatical.

Scheese has taught at Gustavus since 1992. He directed the environmental studies program from 1997-2003 and was the principal author of a $250,000 grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund which was instrumental in building the program during its formative years.

He is the author of two books, Nature Writing: The Pastoral Impulse in America (1996), and Mountains of Memory: A Fire Lookout’s Life in the River of No Return Wilderness (2001), and is currently completing a book entitled The Inhabited Wilderness: Exploring Anasazi Ruins in the Southwest. Part of his sabbatical project is to write a memoir about a cross-country bicycle trip he will undertake in the fall of this year, a dream he has held since graduating from college in 1976, the year of the Bike Centennial, when a trans-America bike route was first officially established.

“I’m very excited about the prospect of living and teaching in the Ukraine,” Scheese said. “It’s a country experiencing a fascinating transition—politically, economically, and culturally—and it will be an incredibly enriching adventure.”

One of the things Scheese plans to do while teaching courses related to his specialty of nature writing is explore, on foot as well as by bicycle, as much of the country and region as he can in four months. “I want to see how the relationship between nature and culture in this part of the world is both different from as well as similar to America’s relationship with the natural environment,” Scheese said.

Scheese will be one of approximately 1,100 American scholars and professionals awarded a Fulbright grant for 2010-11 who will be lecturing in 125 different countries. Created in 1946, the Fulbright program is sponsored by the United States Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.