07/31/96

ATHENS, Ohio -- Two Ohio University faculty members on the Athens campus and a former visiting professor have received Fulbright awards to conduct research or lecture abroad during the 1996-97 academic year.

Fulbright recipients are David Mould, associate professor of telecommunications; Michael Mumper, associate professor of political science; and Walter Friedenberg, former Scripps Howard visiting professional in the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism.

Mould received a Fulbright Lecturing Award to teach communication and journalism from September through July at Kyrgyz National University in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia. Mould will teach courses in mass media, radio news and feature production, and reporting of international news to students who will be entering the journalism field in a country experiencing a difficult transition from state-run and subsidized media to an independent press lacking the economic support it needs.

"For three-fourths of this century, journalists were servants of the state," Mould said. "Now these countries are moving to a more independent press, and they don't have the courses set up to do this. The sheer notion of an advertiser-supported media is relatively new, and raises a whole series of questions which they need some help with.

"The press is Kyrgyzstan is in deep economic trouble. The old government subsidies have been withdrawn, and now they are trying to rely on advertising and the money isn't there," he said. As a result, Mould said, newspapers and magazines have drastically reduced their circulation.

Mould spent three weeks in Kyrgyzstan in December on a joint U.S. Information Agency (USIA)/United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) appointment to establish a journalism/electronic media training and resource center for the city of Osh. He joined the Ohio University faculty in 1980.

With his Fulbright Lecturing Award, Mumper will be a visiting scholar teaching courses in public administration at the American University in Blavoegrad, Bulgaria. Mumper also will serve as a consultant for the development of an off-campus program in public administration.

"I was looking for a place that could use my skills," Mumper said. "This is a country where decisions have been centralized and plans have been made by a central government for years. Now that they've moved toward democracy, autonomous city governments are responsible for managing budgets and public resources for the first time. I'll be working both in the university teaching people who will take over these positions, and helping set up an in-service program to train people working there now."

Mumper, whose specialty is public policy analysis and public administration, joined the Ohio University political science faculty in 1987. He was named a University Professor in 1991, and has received the College of Arts and Sciences Outstanding Teacher Award and the Jeanette G. Grasselli Brown Undergraduate Teaching Award.

Friedenberg, who taught a variety of courses in the Scripps School of Journalism from the fall of 1993 through the spring of 1996, received a Fulbright Lecturing Award to teach at the China School of Journalism in Beijing from September to July. The school, run by the Xinhua News Agency, is the only graduate school of journalism in China.

Friedenberg will teach writing and reporting to 15 students with bachelor's degrees in English who have been recruited by Xinhua News Agency to work as foreign correspondents or in the English-language sector of the news service.

Friedenberg was an escort officer for war correspondents in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, and earned a master's degree in East Asian Studies at Harvard University. During his 30-year career with the Scripps Howard news organization, he served as editor of the Cincinnati Post, foreign correspondent in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, and foreign affairs correspondent in Washington, D.C. He also was editor of the Santa Fe New Mexican from 1991-92. He was the first full-time Scripps Howard visiting professional to teach in the School of Journalism as part of a 10-year program funded by a $1 million grant from the Scripps Howard Foundation.

"This Fulbright completes the circle I started to draw in Korea in 1953," Friedenberg said. "I owe this to the U.S. Army, Harvard and Ohio University. I enjoyed teaching at Ohio University so much, and enjoyed meeting and working closely with the Chinese students in the journalism school."

The Fulbright Scholar Program is administered by the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, a presidentially appointed board that reports to Congress, with assistance from USIA and the Council for International Exchange of Scholars. The program is funded by USIA and cooperating governments and host institutions abroad.