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Educational Programs

Grants for University Teachers

Purpose: The Grants for Higher Education Teachers program blends two of Rotary’s most important emphases education and volunteer service. The primary purpose is to further international understanding and friendship while strengthening higher education in low-income countries. Low-income countries are defined in terms of per capita GNP. If you want more information on the Grants for Higher Education Teachers Program, go to the relevant section on the Rotary International website.

How to Apply?

Who: At the wishes of District 5340, these grants are to be awarded to higher education faculty to teach in the fields of (1.) Food Propagation, (2.) AIDS Prevention, (3.) Computer Education, and/or (4.) Family Health.

Because teachers are providing a service, Rotarians as well as non-Rotarians are eligible. Applicants must hold (or, if retired, must have held) a full-time college - or university - level position for three or more years. Further details regarding this program may be found in the "Rotary Grants for University Teachers" and "Program Guide for Rotarians Ambassadorial Scholarships and Grants for University Teachers". Go to the Rotary website download center.

Awards: Multiple grants have been budgeted for 3-5 months periods at $12,500 each. Some are slated for Scripps Institute of Oceanography. The other teachers can be from any community college or university in the 5340 district.

Where: Teachers will need to travel to a developing country to teach one of the four fields listed above. It is suggested that the teachers travel to District 9200 in Africa or District 4400 in Ecuador.

Application Deadline: Applications are generally accepted in late spring and summer. Click on the "Deadlines" link on the left for more information on the due dates.

Grant Application Form

Grant Recipients 2008-09

Kamala Balasubramanian

Kamala is an Associate Professor of English at Grossmont College. She is being sponsored by La Mesa Sunrise Rotary. She will be going to Chennai, India and spend three months during Summer 2008 at Stella Maris College where she will teach, train English teachers, and develop English Curriculum. She will also be working with Rotary Clubs in Chennai and with community projects, such as AIDS Awareness. Professor Balasubramanian, in addition to English, speaks Tamil and Telugu--languages in the region of Chennai, India.

Maureen Duncan

Maureen is a retired administrator from the College of Alameda in Northern California where she served as Vice President for Instruction. Her academic field is Business and Computer Information Systems. She is a member of Encinitas Coastal Rotary. She will be spending Summer 2008 at Instituto Esperanca de Ensino Superior in Santarem, Brazil. She will be working with University professors in developing their Small Business curriculum and the expansion of their technology program. Maureen is fluent in Portuguese having spent time in Brazil previously as a Peace Corps Volunteer. In recent years she has been in Santarem, which is on the Amazon Region and is familiar with Rotarians in that Rotary District.

Upon their return from India and Brazil in the fall of 2008 both Kamala and Maureen will be available to share their experiences with Rotarians in District 5340.

Previous Grant Recipients

Dr. Janet Mc Daniel of CSU San Marcos to study at Universidad Catolica del Valparaiso in Chile in the Spring and Summer 2005.

Dr. Janet McDaniel is a middle grades educator with thirty years of experience teaching young adolescents and their teachers. She began her career as a history teacher in junior high school in Tacoma, Washington, and then moved to Honolulu, Hawaii where she continued teaching 7th and 8th graders for a decade. Upon completing her master's and doctoral degrees in Education at University of Washington in 1991, she became a faculty member at California State University San Marcos. The university was in its infancy when Janet arrived in San Marcos, and she was an active participant in creating teacher education and graduate programs in the College of Education. She has held several faculty leadership positions in the college and university, and holds the rank of Professor of Education.

Janet is the coordinator of the Middle Level Teacher Education Program at Cal State San Marcos, a position she has held since the program's inception in 1992. This is one of just three programs in California dedicated to the preparation of teachers for grades six through eight. In partnership with North San Diego County middle schools, the Cal State San Marcos program has pioneered a school-based, team-taught approach to educating future teachers of young adolescents. The program is housed in the Gateway Center for Middle Level Education on site at Woodland Park Middle School. The classroom and office facility is jointly owned and operated by the university and the San Marcos Unified School District. The program is well-known and respected across the nation; it was the recipient of the National Association for Multicultural Education's Outstanding Program Award in 1998. Janet was recognized for her contributions to the university in 2004 when she received the Brakebill Distinguished Professor Award, the highest recognition bestowed by the university upon a faculty member.

Janet began studying Spanish in 1996, and has taken 15 language classes at Cal State San Marcos and spent six summers in language institutes with home stays in Spanish-speaking countries. She has studied in Cuernavaca and Oaxaca, Mexico; Nerja and Santiago de Compostela, Spain; Antigua, Guatemala; and Cuzco, Peru. As a recipient of the University Teachers Grant, Janet will be associated with the Catholic University of Valparaiso (UCV) in Valparaiso, Chile from May through August, 2005. UCV is establishing the first middle school teacher education program in Chile, and Janet will be active in teaching and consulting on this program.

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Professor Chris Charles of Scripps Inst. of Oceanography to study at University of Sri Jayewardenepura Nugegodo, Sri Lanka from October 2005 to Feb. 2006.

Dr. Christopher Charles is currently Associate Professor in the Geosciences Research Division of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. He received his B.A. from University of California, Berkeley in 1984 and his Ph.D. from Columbia University (Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory) in 1991. Before moving to Scripps in 1992, he also completed a one-year postdoctoral fellowship at the NASA/ Goddard Institute for Space Studies. His area of research specialization involves the geological record of recent climate change, and he emphasizes stable isotopic tracers in the ocean/atmosphere system. Along with former and current students in his group, he is helping to build a detailed record of the El Niño phenomenon extending through the last few millennia, using fossil corals. This work has taken him to coral reefs throughout the tropical oceans, including the Indian Ocean, where he developed a keen interest in the controls on coral reef vitality. (The reefs of Sri Lanka represent a principal focus for his tenure as a Rotary Teaching Fellow). He also has a long-standing interest in the Southern Ocean deep sea sedimentary record of climate, and he has helped orchestrate several sediment coring campaigns in the South Atlantic Ocean. In his 13 years on the faculty at SIO/UCSD, he has taught at all levels of the University of California system including lower division courses in Earth and Environmental Science, upper division courses in Environmental Systems, and graduate courses in Marine Geology and Climatology.

Water Pros Team with 5340!

In September 2002 and thanks to the spearheading of La Jolla Sunrise Rotarian, Grant Deane, discussions began with Dr. Lisa Shaffer and John Evey of the world-famous Scripps Institute of Oceanography. The three to five month program of Rotary’s Grants For University Teachers was recognized as the key fit to partner Rotary with Scripps by sending professors from Scripps to teach in developing countries.

Drs. Wolf Berger and Alexander (Sasha) Gershunov will teach in Chile and Russia, respectively, in early 2004. Water quality problems in developing countries require better education to facilitate corrective measures to bad situations impacting health and environment. Berger’s Rotary Host Club is La Jolla Golden Triangle with Rotarian, Irwin Rubenstein, as Host Club Counselor. Alexander (Sasha) Gershunov has La Jolla Sunrise as Host Club and Rotarian, George Dewhurst, as Host Club Counselor. The Host Clubs and Host Club Counselors are responsible for the orientation to Rotary of both scholars prior to their departure.

This Rotary Foundation program is funded through Annual Giving donations to The Rotary Foundation by donors within District 5340. Two more short-term scholarships, valued up to $12,500 each, have been approved by our 5340 SHARE Committee for the 2004/05 year…to continue our connection with the Scripps Institute.

Dr. Wolf Berger

Dr. Wolf Berger is currently Professor of Oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD. His educational background is in geology and paleontology. His main interests focus on ocean history and climate history, with emphasis on the last three million years. Within this framework, he concentrates on the origin of ice-age cycles. He also has research projects on climate cycles of the last 2000 years, and on ocean productivity. He has published on the ocean's role in long term climatic change, on the carbon cycle and related geochemical subjects, and on mammoth extinction. He has an amateur's interest in mythology as a means to store earth knowledge.

Professor Berger is a Fellow of three professional societies the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, and the Geological Society of America. His many honors include the Bigelow Medal (Oceanography), the Humboldt Award, the Ewing Medal (Marine Geophysics), the Prince Albert Medal (Oceanography). He is a Foreign Member of the Europena Academy of Sciences.

In 1993 Professor Berger was awarded the Balzan Prize for his pioneer work in oceanography and paleontology. Previous awardees of this Prize include Pope John XXIII, Charles Gillispie, and Mother Teresa.

Dr. Berger is currently Director of the California Space Institute, a multi-campus research unit of the University of California.