Travis Chapin will share construction expertise in Kenya as
Fulbright Scholar

In addition to teaching classes in construction management, Travis Chapin is busy these days studying Swahili. Chapin, a technology systems faculty member in the College of Technology, is preparing for a trip to Kenya next academic year as a Fulbright scholar.

Travis Chapin

Chapin leaves in August for Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) in Nairobi, where he will teach construction management and conduct research on installing concrete pavement in Kenya. A contractor specializing in heavy construction for 15 years before joining the BGSU faculty in 1989, Chapin will share his expertise with students and others in the East African nation, where fewer than 8,000 of the nearly 70,000 miles of highways are paved.

Home to such scenic wonders as Mount Kilimanjaro and Lake Victoria and a host of wildlife, East Africa attracts international tourists on safari. Kenya is the regional hub for trade and finance, but is hampered by corruption, overreliance on several low-priced primary goods, and rampant street crime in its cities. Since his democratic election in 2002, President Mwai Kibaki has been trying to lead the country back to security and prosperity.

This will be Chapin’s third trip to Kenya, which he first visited as a volunteer with Habitat for Humanity in February 2003. Chapin said he “gave up the safari part of the trip” to visit the JKUAT School of Architecture and Building Sciences, which he described as similar to the BGSU College of Technology. There, he set up an exchange program with Bowling Green that has already resulted in one student, Anthony Mutai, coming to BGSU to obtain his master’s degree in construction management. Mutai and other Kenyan students have been helping Chapin learn Swahili.

He returned to Kenya in August 2003 with his wife, Virginia, a student services counselor in admissions, to revisit the Habitat build and present a paper at the International Conference on Sustainable Development hosted by JKUAT.

In the fall of 2002, when once again he became eligible for sabbatical, he began seriously considering the possibility for the first time, Chapin said. “I didn’t want to waste the opportunity,” he explained. English-speaking Africa appealed to him, and after talking to Bruce Edwards, associate dean for distance education and international education, who had been a Fulbright scholar at Daystar University in Nairobi, Chapin decided to apply to teach in Kenya. Seventeen months of planning resulted in a faculty appointment at JKUAT and the Fulbright scholarship.

Beyond his teaching and research assignment, Chapin said he would like to create a “legacy” through this Fulbright opportunity. He would like to establish a summer program in which six to eight BSGU students would go to Nairobi each May, spend about four weeks in classroom study followed by four weeks in hands-on construction of a humanitarian project and then two weeks on safari.

“I’d like for every BGSU student to put themselves in a situation somewhere where they wake up one day and ask themselves, ‘What have I gotten myself into?’ and then grow out of that,” he said. Chapin and his eldest two children have traveled extensively in Third World countries, and he values the perspective, self-confidence and maturity that come from finding oneself in an unfamiliar and perhaps uncomfortable environment.

Created by former U.S. Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the Fulbright program was launched in 1946. It has since expanded into seven distinct programs, allowing visiting scholars to come to America as well as sending U.S. faculty and professionals abroad. The program is sponsored by the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs in the U.S. Department of State with assistance from the Council for International Exchange of Scholars.

Travis Chapin works with a Kenyan volunteer on a Habitat Humanity project in February 2003.