Jerry Holt, associate professor of English, has been awarded a Fulbright Grant to teach a year-long course in Norway for the 2017-18 school year.

Holt will be traveling with his wife to Bergen, Norway in August to teach a course on American crime novels at the University of Bergen.  He will be teaching students from Norway as well as other international students.

“I was very pleased and humbled to learn of my selection.  I work very hard at being a good teacher, and it is heartening to have that work recognized in this way,” Holt said.

The recipients of this year’s Fulbright Scholarships were announced at the beginning of February, the culmination of an application process that Holt said he began last summer.  The grants are named after Senator J. William Fulbright, who founded the Fulbright Program in 1946 to encourage cultural exchanges between Americans and members of other countries.

Holt said he hopes to use the upcoming experience as a learning opportunity.

“My first priority is to be a good international ambassador for Purdue Northwest,” Holt said.  “A lot of the Fulbright experience involves cultural exchange, and thus I hope to learn from my Norwegian students and colleagues and to share with them the best of what we do here.  I also welcome the opportunity to live and work in the country of Norway, whose vibrant history and culture have always attracted me.”

Holt has served as both a professor and as the chair of the English department at the Westville campus since moving to Indiana from Ohio in 2008.  He is also a playwright and an author who most recently completed a play about the life of Ernie Pyle, a World War II field reporter from Indiana.  The play was featured as part of the Indiana Bicentennial Celebration in Indianapolis.  His novel, “The Killing of Strangers,” a fictional crime novel based on the infamous shooting at Kent State University in 1970, was published in 2006.

Elaine Carey, the incoming dean of College of Humanities, Education, and Social Sciences, said this is a great achievement for Holt.

“As a novelist and playwright who considers the significance of place and time, Dr. Holt will greatly add to his Norwegian students’ knowledge of the United States, the Midwest and American literature and culture. I am sure that he, too, will find new and exciting material for future work,” Carey said.

Holt said he and his wife are looking forward to exploring the natural beauty of Norway during their time abroad.