Consuelo Waight, Ph.D., professor of executive human resource development (HRD), has been appointed to the Fulbright Specialist Roster as of April 2024, marking her third lifetime engagement with the Fulbright Program to date.
The Fulbright Specialist Roster is a database through which participating universities from across the world can seek vetted faculty members in relevant disciplines who are open to undertaking collaborative projects. Waight's roster tenure began in April and will end in 2027.
Waight was a Fulbright student from Belize to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 28 years ago. In 2016 she was selected for the Fulbright Scholar Award and traveled back to her native Belize to spend four months with the University of Belize doing research and conducting e-learning workshops.
During this time, Waight co-founded Belize's first Association of HR Professionals, a significant milestone in her global impact. Her acceptance to the Specialist Roster represents her third unique Fulbright engagement.
Most recently, Waight served as the President of the Fulbright Alumni Association Houston Southeast chapter.
"The Fulbright Program is very dear to my heart," she said. "It has been at the forefront of my academic journey and has offered me enriching experiences that have strengthened my teaching and research."
Last year, Waight led the learning abroad portion of the global HRD course for the Executive HRD program in Portugal. During this trip, she met with colleagues at the Business and Economics School, Instituto Superior de Gestão (ISG), and explored collaborative opportunities.
That meeting led to a cross-border study on human resources and artificial intelligence, which Waight leads. The idea of her return to ISG as a Fulbright specialist emerged during the cross-border collaboration.
Waight looks forward to the new opportunities that may be made possible by her inclusion on the roster, in addition to her current collaboration on an ongoing multi-national, cross-border research study on human resources and artificial intelligence with universities in Portugal and Brazil.
"What I foresee for the future is to be able to further assist, transfer, and help build capacity in other countries across the world,” she said. “The ripple effect of working with Fulbright has shown me that those relationships transcend the classroom and the research studies, so that's what I'm looking forward to: developing the strength of those relationships and how that then lends itself back to student learning – how those experiences help me develop further, so that I can come back to the classroom and add even more value to our students' educations.”
"Fulbright enriches the mind, the heart – it broadens perspective. It gives us purpose for what we do in the classroom, what we do in our interactions, and what we do from a research perspective. The value of studying and learning abroad is in both the academic and cultural experiences. What happens in that engagement is something that you can't stay put in the classroom and do," she added. "Fulbright enriches the mind, the heart, and the soul—it broadens perspectives and strengthens how we connect and relate in the many academic spaces we occupy. Fulbright was central to my socialization as a student and continues to influence my becoming."