Karen Longman Receives Prestigious Fulbright Award

Karen Longman, PhD, professor emerita in Azusa Pacific University’s Department of Higher Education, was recently recognized with a prestigious Fulbright award for the 2023-24 academic year.

In August, Longman will travel to Lithuania to teach at LCC International University (the only English-speaking Christian university in Eastern Europe) for the fall semester. The university enrolls more than 800 students who come from 65 countries, including about 200 students from Ukraine at the present time. Longman will join the faculty to instruct a course entitled “Principles for Leading in Turbulent Times.” She will also offer a leadership seminar series for university staff, a critical need according to Margarita Pavlovič, MEd, LCC vice president for student life. Longman will be available to host a multi-week book discussion group that will focus on the leader identity development process, in contrast to “leadership development” skills per se. The group will collaborate in reading the book Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader by Herminia Ibarra. Additionally, Longman plans to conduct a qualitative research project, drawing from the rich cultural diversity of the LCC community to gain deeper insights into the leader identity development process of women leaders on LCC’s campus, including how factors in their formative years and in response to the region's current crisis situation have impacted their leadership aspirations and experiences.

“APU has a strong history and an ongoing relationship with LCC International University. My hope is to add to that history by taking my knowledge base, teaching experience, and background in higher education to support the students and institutional leadership who are living in a challenging region of the world,” Longman said. “I feel very thankful for the support I have received from APU as I went through the competitive Fulbright application process, and I anticipate many win-win benefits from teaching and researching at LCC.”

Longman earned a PhD in Higher Education and an MA in Guidance and Counseling from the University of Michigan. She served for six years as the vice president for academic affairs and dean of the faculty at Greenville College (now University) and for 19 years as vice president for professional development and research at the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU). Over the course of her career, Longman has authored numerous successful grant proposals totaling over $2.5 million, has co-edited a seven-volume book series in collaboration with the International Leadership Association, and has spent more than two decades overseeing the annual CCCU Leadership Development Institutes, which have served and equipped more than 600 emerging leaders across Christian higher education.

The Fulbright Program awards only 800 scholar grants per year to university faculty and administrators out of thousands of applicants in the U.S. APU boasts 72 Fulbright Awards offered to faculty, students, and alumni since 2002. Fulbright scholars play a critical role in U.S. public diplomacy with alumni including 62 Nobel Laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, 78 MacArthur Fellows, and thousands of leaders and world-renowned experts in academia and many other fields across private, public, and non-profit sectors.

Since its inception in 1946, under legislation by the late Senator J. William Fulbright, the Fulbright Program has provided more than 400,000 people with the opportunity to observe others’ political, economic, educational, and cultural institutions, to exchange ideas, and to embark on international ventures of importance. The program operates in more than 150 countries worldwide.