News from SUNY Cortland

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Theatre Scholar Thomas Hischak To Teach In Greece As Fulbright Senior Specialist

CORTLAND, NY (04/04/2008; 1532)(readMedia)-- Thomas Hischak, a SUNY Cortland professor of performing arts who specializes in theatre, will participate in a Fulbright Senior Specialists project at the University of Patras in Greece for three weeks during May.

Hischak was chosen for the honor by the U.S. Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. He was originally approved to make the trip in May 2007 but the project was cancelled after the country’s universities went on strike. Now rescheduled with the Fulbright Foundation in Greece, Hischak is currently set to arrive in Athens on May 4.

While in Greece, Hischak will give guest lectures and offer workshops on American theatre, musical theatre and musical films as well as direct an American one-act play to be performed in English by students in the university’s Department of Theatre Studies.

“I hope my visit will lay the groundwork for future cooperation between the University of Patras and SUNY Cortland,” Hischak added.

Founded in 1964, the University of Patras is the third largest and fastest growing institution of higher learning in Greece, with more than 20,000 undergraduate and post-graduate students located on a 600-acre campus at the foot of Mount Panachaico on the Gulf of Corinth. The Theatre Studies Department was established in 1989 and currently has 240 undergraduate majors.

Hischak was among 400 U.S. faculty and professionals selected last year to travel abroad through the Fulbright Senior Specialists Program, established in 2000 to provide short-term academic opportunities to prominent U. S. faculty and professionals to support curricular and faculty development at 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. Thousands of U.S. faculty and professionals and their foreign counterparts have taught, studied or conducted research abroad in the 50-year existence of the program.

A member of the College’s Department of Performing Arts, Hischak has taught and directed theatre productions at SUNY Cortland since 1983. He has written 15 books on theatre, film and popular music, and is a playwright with 20 published plays. In 2004, he was honored with a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activity. Hischak holds degrees in theatre and English from St. Louis University and Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

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