Findlay, Ohio, July 11, 2001 — Barry Mickey, professor of social work and director of the social work program at The University of Findlay, has been awarded a Fulbright grant to lecture and help develop an undergraduate social work program at the University of Conakry in Guinea, West Africa.

Mickey is one of approximately 2,000 U.S. grantees who will travel abroad for the 2001-2002 academic year through the Fulbright Program. Established in 1946 under legislation introduced by the late Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the program’s purpose is to build mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the rest of the world.

Currently, no undergraduate social work programs exist in the country of Guinea. Mickey will be researching the community and the agencies that provide services there and determining whether the agencies are interested in a social work program. He will also teach in the College of Liberal Arts at the university.

Mickey applied for the Fulbright Award in March 2001. He said his interest in helping develop a new program, his love of travel, the fact that he speaks French, Guinea’s official language, is what interested him in this opportunity. His eighth-grade son, Patrick, will accompany him on the trip, while is wife, Mary Lynn, and oldest son, Isaac, may join them later.

Coming to Findlay in 1992, Mickey was instrumental in helping UF’s social work program earn national accreditation in 1995. Previously, Mickey was an associate professor of social work at Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa, from 1989-92 and an associate professor of social work at Delta State University in Cleveland, Miss., from 1979-89. He served as a social worker for the Department of Human Services in Mena, Ark., from 1972-75. Mickey earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Mississippi in 1967 and his master’s degree in social work from the University of Oklahoma in 1977.

Mickey is just the third UF faculty member to receive the Fulbright Award. In 1991-92, Diane Kendig, assistant professor of English, taught in Nicaragua, and in 1996-97, Gary Sayed, a former assistant professor of nuclear medicine at UF, taught in Turkey.