School of Education adjunct faculty Mathew Swerdloff receives Fulbright award to work in Nigeria

Mathew Swerdloff, adjunct faculty in SUNY New Paltz’s School of Education, has been awarded a Fulbright Specialist grant to visit University of Lagos (UniLag) in Lagos, Nigeria for fall 2025.  

Through the grant, Swerdloff will spend six weeks developing an institution called The Center for Academic Excellence within UniLag, which will become an integral part of the onboarding process for new faculty hires.  

He will be working with current faculty and leadership at UniLag to identify best practices in the uses of instructional technology, effective pedagogy and incorporation of social-emotional awareness into teaching.   

The goal of the project is to establish at the end of the six weeks a self-sustaining unit for all new faculty hires, which will include a formal onboarding process with professional development and a mechanism for evaluation and adaption. 

In 2013, Swerdloff was awarded a Fulbright Specialist grant to travel to Santiniketan, India, where he offered lectures and workshops to students and staff at Visva-Bharati University and several other schools in the states of Bihar and West Bengal. He also received the same award in 2020, which led him to offer mindfulness trainings to business administration students in Bihar at the Indian Institute of Management (IIMBG).  

The Fulbright Program is the U.S. government’s flagship international educational and cultural exchange program, creating connections in a complex and changing world. Led by the U.S. government in partnership with 160 countries worldwide, Fulbright builds lasting connections between the people of the United States and the people of other countries—building mutual understanding between nations, advancing knowledge across communities, and improving lives around the world. Learn more here.