A Montgomery County Community College faculty member has recently been tapped to help promote the Fulbright Scholarship Program.

Sociology Associate Professor Garvey M. Lundy was recently named a Fulbright Scholar Alumni Ambassador.

Alumni Ambassadors represent the best of the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program and were selected through a competitive process. Ambassadors serve two-year terms and present information on their Fulbright experience at multiple events on college campuses and academic conferences each year nationally. 

Making Fulbright Accessible

Lundy was surprised when he’d learned he’d been named a Fulbright Scholar Alumni Ambassador, given the several hundred others who had also applied for the honor.

“I wanted the opportunity to promote the Fulbright Scholarship,” he said. “In particular, what I think is interesting about the Fulbright is there are very few community college professors who apply for Fulbright. I wanted to make it more accessible to my colleagues here and around the country who are in community colleges.

“People think that in order to get a Fulbright you need to be in a four-year institution or an elite institution and you have to have a lot of publications. That’s not often the case. The Fulbright that I got was what they refer to as a Teaching Fulbright. I go there as a teaching scholar because of my expertise in teaching. I think some of the best teachers in this country are in fact at the community college level, because that’s where we hone our skills. We have to be able to excite students on a topic they generally are not excited about and they’re not majoring in.” 

Lundy, who began teaching at MCCC in the fall of 2008, lives in Philadelphia. He was selected to participate in the Fulbright program from October 2017 to August 2018, a 10-month program in the Central African country of Cameroon, in the capital city of Yaoundé. Lundy taught sociology in the University of Yaoundé I, the central teaching institution in the country, he said.

Among the classes he taught were sociological theory, American sociology and theory of post-colonial or colonial African theory.

Born in Haiti, Lundy came to the United States when he was 6 years old. He grew up in Brooklyn and attended Brooklyn College and Penn State University for his graduate degree. He did post-doctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania for several years, where he co-authored several books related to education: “The Source of the River” (2003) and “African Americans and Homeschooling” (2015), as well as articles related to the Haitian experience in America.

At MCCC, Lundy teaches Introduction to Sociology, Sociology of the Family, The Sociology of Sports and Leisure, and the Sociology of Death and Dying. His main areas of interest are education, race and ethnic relations, and Haitian migration. 

Culture Shock

Lundy’s experience as a Fulbright Scholar was eye-opening for him. He quickly felt a culture shock from life in Central Africa. Cameroon has two official languages, French and English, so to accommodate the two groups of students in his classroom, Lundy would write his Power Point presentations in French but would lecture in English.

“I had to adapt to new ways of instruction,” he said. “The facilities are different. I was teaching to a class of about 500 students, but the classroom can only contain about half of those students. So, when exams came, all students came for the exam. I had to somehow write two versions of the exam and divide the class into two portions. Half of them would sit outside and take it.

“It was an interesting process. You begin to appreciate in education, under those circumstances, those who make it through and succeed, given the difficult hurdles you have to go through. It’s truly impressive. You truly appreciate education and the people who fight for it.”

Lundy also felt his time in Cameroon gave him a lesson in “the human experience.”

“I think I went there with a certain expectation of what I was going to discover,” he said. “What I discovered was much larger than that. I discovered the expansiveness of humanity, the complexity and beauty of humanity and the fact that we are all one. We are all human and we are all the same. It’s an interesting lesson to learn and it took me being away from this country to learn that we are all the same.”

His time in Cameroon changed the lives of those he taught as well. During Lundy’s last week in Cameroon, he’d purchased an authentic piece of clothing to wear from the country and went to a tailor in the city to have it adjusted. The tailor was one of his students. Lundy said the student refused to charge him for the work, as it would be an insult for him to charge his teacher, for whom he had such respect.

“It really touched me and felt that typified the nature of the educational system,” said Lundy. “And the way they have such respect for teachers and professors there and the educational experience.”

Since returning from his journey, Lundy said he’s had the privilege to share his experience with his MCCC students.

“My experience as a Fulbright opened my consciousness of the larger world around me and has made me more sensitive to how we live in a global village,” he said. “That idea has fueled my interaction with my students and has forced me to incorporate a larger view when discussing, for example, the sociology of religion, stratification and poverty, gender/sexuality, and fundamental issues of identity. These topics, and others, when I lecture/discuss in class is now fused with a global perspective.”

He’s excited to promote the Fulbright program through this ambassadorship and talk about its unique opportunities outside the classroom and into the community. 

MCCC has hosted four Fulbright Scholars-in-Residence – Chemistry Professor Dr. Jiaxi Xu from China, History Professor Fernando Da Silva Camargo from Brazil, Education Professor Rosnani Binti Hashim from Malaysia and Artist/Professor Cephas Yao Agbemenu from Kenya.

The Fulbright Scholar Program, funded by the U.S. Department of State, supports more than 800 U.S. faculty and professionals each year to teach or conduct research in over 135 countries around the world. The Fulbright award is a prestigious honor that brings distinction to the faculty member and their institution. A key priority for the State Department is to increase the diversity and quality of the scholars who participate in the program and the range of U.S. higher education institutions that are represented overall.

To support this goal, the Institute of International Education (IIE) launched the Fulbright Scholar Alumni Ambassador Program. Ambassadors not only represent the program externally, they serve as advisors about critical aspects of the program to the State Department and the program’s implementing agency, the IIE. Travel and other expenses of the Ambassadors are supported through generous private funding raised by trustees and donors of IIE through its Fulbright Legacy Fund.

Garvey Lundy’s Fulbright Ambassador profile can be viewed on the Fulbright Alumni Ambassadors landing page.