DePaul University College of Law Professor Jerold Friedland was honored when he was selected as a Fulbright scholar in 1987 and spent a year in Beijing, China, teaching international business law and experiencing Asian culture. Fulbright has honored Friedland again by selecting him as one of the first academics to receive a new alumni initiative grant that is designed to sustain the impact of Fulbrighters on their U.S. and overseas institutions and organizations.

      Friedland's alumni grant will support a faculty exchange program between the College of Law and Beijing Foreign Studies University in China. Over the next two years, three professors from China will come to DePaul and three DePaul professors will visit Beijing to learn and teach constitutional and business law and experience the way they are practiced in a foreign country.

      "Jerry's achievement is a true example of the College of Law's goals," said Teree E. Foster, dean. "This program affords faculty the opportunity to explore a new avenue and bring a broad and global perspective to their instruction. Jerry's program has won the support of Fulbright and the College of Law because it is timely and so overwhelmingly important.

      An expert in tax and international business law, Friedland joined the College of Law faculty in 1979. He directed DePaul's Graduate Tax Program from 1986 to 1997. Prior to his tenure at DePaul, Friedland worked for the chief counsel of the Internal Revenue Service in Washington, D.C. and practiced law in Denver. Friedland has a great deal of international teaching experience. In addition to his service as a Fulbright Senior Scholar, Freidland returned to China in June of 2000 to lecture at a number of universities. During July of 1999 and 2000, he taught international taxation at the Institute for World Legal Problems in Innsbruck, Austria.

      "The Fulbright Alumni Initiatives Award supports a program that will have a lasting impact on DePaul and Beijing Foreign Studies University," said Friedland. "The award will foster graduate programs on U.S. constitutional history and law in China and enhance DePaul's faculty expertise and curricula in international law and business. The faculty exchanges will give DePaul law professors new knowledge and insight regarding global issues in general, and particular expertise about the growing legal and economic relationship between the United States and China."

      Friedland is one of 22 academics selected for the new alumni award, which was designed to update and build on the strengths of the 54-year-old Fulbright Scholar Program, one of the U.S. government's flagship international exchanges. The U.S. State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs joined forces with the Institute of International Education, an independent nonprofit organization, to fund the alumni program. More than 525 Americans who worked and studied abroad on Fulbrights between 1990 and 1999 applied for the grants.

      Winning submissions ranged from projects like Friedland's to distance-learning courses between U.S. and overseas institutions, to collaborative research studies.

      Editor's note: Friedland can be reached at 312/362-8747.