What an HBCU Professor Discovered in Siberia as a Fulbright Specialist
February 17, 2021
Dr. Maurice Mongkuo (left) stands with one of his students while serving as a Fulbright Specialist at Altai State University.
Siberia was not where Maurice Mongkuo had initially imagined he would be going when he applied to the Fulbright Specialist Program.
When he was matched to a project to provide lectures and workshops at Altai State University (ASU), a public institution in Western Siberia, Mongkuo acknowledges he did not know much about the region, except for the long and complex political relationship between Washington and Moscow.
“I had no idea what to expect,” says Dr. Mongkuo, a Professor of Public Administration at Fayetteville State University (FSU), a historically black university in North Carolina. “I didn’t know how they were going to receive me as an American.”