WSU’s Colleen Finegan travels to Portugal for Fulbright Specialists project
 | | Colleen Finegan spent two weeks in Porto, Portugal as part of a Fulbright Specialists project. Photo courtesy of Colleen Finegan. |
Colleen Finegan, professor and chair of teacher education, spent two weeks in Portugal this past June as part of the Fulbright Specialists Program. Finegan taught graduate students in special education, social education, and psychology at the School of Education at Paula Frassinetti, a Catholic university in Porto, Portugal.
“It was all about special education in general, working with students and preparing teachers to teach students with disabilities,” said Finegan. “The interest and the support for working with children with disabilities and their families was so ingrained that it was a driving force for the whole college.”
Finegan shared current research in special education, including information that was presented during an international special education conference held at Wright State. She also talked about the Office of Disability Services and how accessible Wright State is to disabled students.
 | | While in Portugal, Finegan enjoyed a cruise along the Douro River. Photo courtesy of Colleen Finegan. |
“They want to form a partnership with Wright State’s College of Education and Human Services so that some of their students might be able to come here and learn more about working with students with disabilities,” she explained. “They’re interested in opening up their own colleges to students with disabilities and making them more accessible and accommodating to those students right on campus.”
Outside of the classroom, Finegan enjoyed soaking up the local culture and cuisine. She would leave her apartment 90 minutes early each morning to walk through the local neighborhoods on her way to school. “I would stop and go into the little grocery stores, which I really enjoyed, and buy Portuguese cheese, which is just wonderful,” she recalled. “I was trying to learn some of the words for the fruits and vegetables in Portuguese, but it’s very difficult to learn Portuguese if you know any Spanish. The words are similar, but the pronunciation is different. The people who ran the fruit stands were very kind to me and appreciated the fact that I was trying to learn how to say the words.”
Another highlight for Finegan was attending the midsummer’s festival, where she enjoyed “the most fantastic fireworks I’ve ever seen in my life.” She also traveled to Gaia, where port wine is made; took a five-hour boat trip along the Douro River; went to Mass in Fatima; saw exquisite tiles in the town of Tavira; and visited Roman ruins in Conimbriga.
 | | Porto, Portugal. Photo courtesy of Colleen Finegan. |
But what had the most impact on Finegan was the sense of community she found in Portugal. “The community atmosphere of being in Portugal was just overwhelming to me. I loved every minute of being there,” she said. “The close relationships between school, community, families, religious institutions—there weren’t dividing lines like you see here—most of their efforts were an interaction of all of those groups. There was a united effort to solve challenges.”
Finegan said Wright State’s Second Mile Group, of which she is a member, is a good example of the type of collaboration she saw in Portugal. “They informally meet together, they want the students to be happy here and to stay here, and they want the students’ voices to be heard. That’s exactly the kind of thing I saw in Portugal,” she said. These are lessons Finegan brings to her own role as chair of the Department of Teacher Education. “I’m encouraging people within our department that if you really feel strongly about something, let’s meet informally to solve problems and make things better.”
 | | View from the Douro River. Photo courtesy of Colleen Finegan. |
Finegan is one of over 400 U.S. faculty and professionals who traveled abroad this year through the Fulbright Specialists Program. The Fulbright Specialists Program, created in 2000 to complement the traditional Fulbright Scholar Program, provides short-term academic opportunities to prominent U.S. faculty and professionals to support curricular and faculty development and institutional planning at post secondary, 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. Over its 60 years of existence, thousands of U.S. faculty and professionals have taught, studied or conducted research abroad, and thousands of their counterparts from other countries have engaged in similar activities in the United States. Over 285,000 emerging leaders in their professional fields have received Fulbright awards, including individuals who later became heads of government, Nobel Prize winners, and leaders in education, business, journalism, the arts and other fields. Recipients of Fulbright Scholar awards are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement.
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