Two area men recognized for Fulbright awards

Gregory Alexander poses in the living room of his Jefferson City home, July 20, 2017. Alexander returned from Australia in May after spending five months completing his Fulbright scholarship. He is a professor at MU's Sinclair School of Nursing.
Gregory Alexander poses in the living room of his Jefferson City home, July 20, 2017. Alexander returned from Australia in May after spending five months completing his Fulbright scholarship. He is a professor at MU's Sinclair School of Nursing.

Sometimes it's healthy to be on the outside looking in - and living on the other side of the world for a time can be a way to get those critical observations, even if unintentionally.

Two Mid-Missouri residents were recognized with four others in the state this week by U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer for their receipt of J. William Fulbright scholarships that enabled them to live abroad for a few months and complete research projects: Gregory Alexander, of Jefferson City, and Kevin Bird, of Osage Beach.

Alexander was in Australia from January to May of this year, and Bird was in Belgium last September through June.

Alexander and his wife, Mary, lived in "granny flat" Airbnb properties in Denistone East, a suburb of Sydney accessible to Macquarie University, the center of his work. Granny flats are small homes in the backyards of larger ones that families rent out, he explained.

Alexander is a professor at the University of Missouri's Sinclair School of Nursing in Columbia. His Fulbright award paid for his and his wife's housing and most of their food expenses while he was in Australia to research the use and sophistication of information technology in long-term care facilities for elderly people, to make comparisons with the same types of facilities in the United States.

"The problems are not that much different. The interesting thing about it is you can learn from one another," he said, noting solutions to similar problems can differ along lines of different cultures and economies.

"There are things you won't understand unless you're there, seeing things day to day," Bird said of his time in Belgium, particularly when it came to witnessing firsthand the more complex and nuanced realities behind safety and security in Europe after a series of deadly and high-profile terrorist attacks over the past few years.

He said a lot of Americans speak too broadly of Europe, and likewise, a lot of Europeans "also don't have the full picture of what's going on in America." Along with fears about terrorism, contentious elections have been shared international experiences in the past year, too, particularly in Belgium's neighbors, The Netherlands and France.

He said people in Europe remain resilient, and cosmopolitanism remains a daily necessity when an hour's worth of travel would bring Belgians halfway across their country. A nine-hour trip like Bird's to his soon-to-start doctoral program at Michigan State University would mean traveling across two or three countries in western Europe.

"Most people are at least bilingual, and more than likely, they're trilingual," he said. A night out at a restaurant means hearing a blend of conversations in French, Dutch, English and German, with some Spanish and Italian thrown in.

Bird studied computational evolutionary genetics at the Flemish Institute of Biotechnology's campus at Ghent University. He used computers to speed through millions of years' worth of simulated evolution to study how new traits emerge from the replication of genomes.

He graduated from the University of Missouri last year and hadn't lived outside of the state. In addition to adapting to the different linguistic environment, living in a much larger urban setting than what he's used to presented its own set of challenges.

He didn't have a car or an international phone plan, and neither did Alexander. That meant a lot of walking, biking, or using public transportation like trains and ferries, as well as having news about the United States filtered through foreign media and living without being plugged in to smartphones' continuous stream of information.

Bird said not having a cellphone in his pocket for an afternoon isn't a big deal anymore.

Alexander added the mostly tech-free existence meant "a lot of uninterrupted time together" with his wife, which he misses now that he's stateside. Not having a car also meant not having to worry about things like fuel, flat tires or oil changes.

In addition to his work at Macquarie, Alexander traveled around Australia by train to visit residences for elderly people. He even presented some of his work at Parliament.

By the second month or so, he said, the country of a 14- to 16-hour time difference from America had come to feel like home. He and his wife had their favorite spots where they would be regulars, like the Meadowbay Fish and Chips restaurant.

They were there long enough to be immersed in the country's culture. "Just going somewhere on vacation, you don't get to do that," he said.