Professor Emeritus Provides Expertise in Haiti as Fulbright Senior Scholar

Dr. Nick Eastmond has pioneered education, technology and research here at Utah State University. This month he is taking his expertise to Haiti as a Fulbright Senior Scholar.

He will teach a workshop on education research and help design classes in statistics and education research—and he’ll do it all in French. Though he has not been to Haiti before, this new challenge is a good fit for the emeritus professor, who has had many experiences around the globe.

"In a lot of ways it's a really nice fit because there's a class I taught for the [Emma Eccles Jones College of Education and Human Services] called Research for the Classroom Teacher,” he said. That class, which he co-developed with then-graduate student John Louviere, won the Web CT Exemplary Course Project Award in 2001.

Eastmond’s work in Haiti will be in Notre Dame d’Haiti’s branch in the city of Jacmel, and it will last for six weeks. His J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship was offered to him on the basis of academic and professional achievement, through the U.S. Department of State. 

His objective, both in past work at USU and in his future work in Haiti, will be using research to solve problems in education. “Learners should be asking questions that will make a difference to them,” he said. “I want them to say, ‘Here’s a problem that I want to investigate.’ I want them to wrestle with how to do a study.”

Eastmond is fluent in French, has taught university level courses in French in two universities and has been a visiting professor in Paris and at the Department of Foreign Languages at the United States Air Force Academy. In addition, he and his wife, Irene, served an LDS mission in Benin, West Africa, which has cultural ties to Haiti.

He is a professor emeritus of the Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences department, but his research course was taught college-wide.