Dr. Kathryn Northcut, professor of English and technical communication at Missouri University of Science and Technology, will travel to North South University in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in February 2025 as a Fulbright Specialist. She will work with grant writers and researchers to expand their research capacity by sharing her experience with proposal development.

Recipients of Fulbright Specialist awards are selected on the basis of academic and professional achievement, demonstrated leadership in their field, and their potential to foster long-term cooperation between institutions in the U.S. and abroad.

Fulbright Specialists are matched with projects at institutions across more than 160 countries. Host institutions apply to the Fulbright Commission and the U.S. Embassy after determining a need, and they can either request a specific expert in the associated field or be matched with a specialist who expresses interest. These projects last a minimum of two weeks and can be up to 42 days long.

According to the Fulbright website, the Fulbright Prize has been awarded since 1993 to honor “outstanding contributions toward bringing peoples, cultures or nations to greater understanding of others.” The prize is named after J. William Fulbright, a longtime U.S. senator from Arkansas who created the program.  

Northcut joined the S&T faculty in 2004 and was instrumental in building the university’s bachelor’s and master’s degree programs in technical communication. Before joining S&T, Northcut earned a Ph.D. in technical communication and rhetoric from Texas Tech University, where she also taught for a year prior to her doctoral studies. Before that, Northcut was a technical writer in Fort Collins, and earned a master’s degree in teaching English as a second language from Colorado State University. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English with a minor in geology from Western Colorado University.

Northcut is the co-editor of two books, the most recent of which was edited with Han Yu and is titled Scientific Communication: Practices, Theories and Pedagogies, published in 2019. Her co-edited book with Eva Brumberger, Designing Texts: Teaching Visual Communication, won the 2015 Conference on College Composition and Communication award for the best original collection of essays in technical or scientific communication. She received a 2017 Faculty Excellence Award for sustained excellence in research, service and teaching, and has received several other campus and departmental awards. In 2018, Northcut was named Missouri S&T’s Woman of the Year.

About Missouri S&T

Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) is a STEM-focused research university of over 7,000 students located in Rolla, Missouri. Part of the four-campus University of Missouri System, Missouri S&T offers over 100 degrees in 40 areas of study and is among the nation’s top public universities for salary impact, according to the Wall Street Journal. For more information about Missouri S&T, visit www.mst.edu.