Alumna wins Fulbright Scholar grant

Rice alumna Felicia Cavallini ’84 received a Fulbright Scholar grant to do research in Canada for a semester this fall.

She is one of approximately 1,100 U.S. faculty and other professionals who will travel abroad through the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program in 2014-15. The highly competitive, merit-based Fulbright grants support international educational exchange for rising scholars or practitioners who have demonstrated outstanding qualifications and have a record of experience and accomplishment in their research area.

Felicia Cavallini

Cavallini, who has a B.A. in health and physical education from Rice, is a professor of physical education at Limestone College in Gaffney, S.C.

As a Fulbright Scholar, Cavallini will be the research chair in the Department of Human Health and Nutritional Sciences at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario. She will collaborate with researchers on how to convince the public of the importance of exercise and fitness.

“People know exercise is vital to our everyday health and well-being, but statistics show the majority of Americans are still not engaged,” she said. “We hope to design a research template that can not only benefit Canada, but the United States and our region as well, in particularly, South Carolina.”

As an undergraduate student at Rice, Cavallini played on the volleyball and basketball teams. While pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of Houston, she served on Rice’s faculty in health and human performance and directed the wellness program. She also was a resident associate at Brown College.

The Fulbright Program was founded by U.S. Sen. William Fulbright to increase mutual understanding between people of the U.S. and people of other countries. With an annual appropriation from Congress, the U.S. Department of State supports Fulbright exchanges with more than 155 countries. The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program is administered by the Council for International Exchange of Scholars, a division of the Institute of International Education.