One USM Professor is going to Chile

Hattiesburg, Miss. - One USM professor has been awarded the Fullbright Fellowship and he's taking his teaching to Chile for four months.

Professor of education, Dr. Thomas O’Brien said, "This is just a great opportunity for me to get there. I've never been to South America and this is just a place I've always wanted to go to. It's an opportunity of a lifetime."

O'Brien will help develop new strategies in teacher training at the Universidad of Católic del Maule. The university is one of the top schools for teacher education and is ranked 15th overall in the country.

O’Brien said "the first part is to work with people who are teaching or people who wish to become teachers and work with them in ways where teachers teach in such a way that students become active in the learning process. I'm challenging the old paradigm of lecture."

O'Brien believes this approach will enable students to retain more of the information they are learning.

O’Brien said "The content will be basically social studies oriented, using a multi-disciplinary approach and there's a research dimension to my project down there where I will be working in a research support role."