Assistant professor Richmond Eustis will be teaching at the University of Jordan next year after being awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant.

Senator J. William Fulbright established the highly competitive program in 1946.

Its purpose is to bring foreign academics to the United States and to send American scholars abroad in hopes of sharing, talking and collaborating with each other, according to Eustis.

Eustis is one of approximately 1,100 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program. The program operates in over 155 countries worldwide.

“The application takes a long time,” Eustis said, “I applied in July and I think my application was 25 to 30 pages long.”

In his application, Eustis compiled syllabi and an essay describing his project, what he wants to do, why his country of choice is appropriate and why he should be the person to do it.

“My proposal is to teach two courses,” Eustis said. “One would be a course in transcendentalist literature, which is based on a course I taught here (at Nicholls). The other is a seminar on the literature of New Orleans and South Louisiana, looking at New Orleans in much the same way that I look at transcendentalist literature, again as a field for global interplay of culture, literature and music.”

Eustis has traveled extensively, but has never been to Jordan.

“I’m pretty excited about it, actually. It’s right in the middle of lots of places I’ve always wanted to go,” Eustis said. “It’s a stable, comfortable place to be in the Middle East. I think if I want to spend a year somewhere, it would be a good place to do it.”

Eustis said he studied Arabic in graduate school, and the opportunity to practice it was “enormously appealing”.

“The Arabic one studies in school is not really the Arabic that’s spoken. It differs from country, to country so it’ll be nice to learn a daily-use Arabic,” Eustis said.

He will arrive in Jordan in late July or early August.

“I’m excited and daunted at the same time. I’m very honored, but now I feel like I’d really like to go and deliver over there. With any luck, I’ll be able to enrich the University of Jordan and then contribute even further to Nicholls when I return.”

Eustis said that he has “traveled a little bit.” As a student he lived in Spain for a year. Some of the other countries he has visited include Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, France, England, Italy, Turkey and Morocco. He worked as a wilderness guide in Costa Rica, and says that “one of these days,” he’ll make it to Asia.

He offered advice to students who are interested in travel and studying abroad.

“There are a million opportunities for international travel and there are a million opportunities to get funded doing it,” Eustis said. “If you can find ways to have your expenses covered when you travel, that’s really the way to go. Or even if you can’t, I don’t think anybody has ever regretted the money they’ve spent traveling.”

Eustis said, “I think travel is the kind of thing that repays the expense a hundredfold and in ways that you wouldn’t expect. I think it’s really important to try to get, so I try to spend a good amount of time in other places.”

Fulbright alumni have achieved distinction in government, science, the arts, business, philanthropy, education and many other fields. Fifty-three Fulbright alumni from 12 countries have been awarded the Nobel Prize, and 78 alumni have received Pulitzer Prizes.

Fulbright recipients are among more than 50,000 individuals participating in U.S. Department of State exchange programs each year. The Council for International Exchange of Scholars, a division of the Institution of International Education, administers the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program.