Jospeter Mbuba Purdue Fort Wayne’s 2nd Fulbright recipient for 2023

For the second time in two months, a member of Purdue University Fort Wayne’s faculty has received a prestigious Fulbright grant. Jospeter Mbuba, a professor and chair of the Department of Criminal Justice and Public Administration, was recently notified of his selection for the Fulbright Award to Zimbabwe. His five and a half months devoted to curriculum development at Africa University will begin in August.
 
“In addition to serving as an advocate for sound, proactive, and smart crime management approaches by introducing criminal justice as a discipline of study to my colleagues in Zimbabwe, I am also eager to create a suitable study abroad destination for our Purdue Fort Wayne students in all majors,” Mbuba said. “Moreover, this experience will help open a special space for faculty exchange and inter-university linkages beyond the realms of my own discipline of criminal justice.”
 
Mbuba’s areas of specialization include policing and law enforcement, corrections, crime policy, and program evaluation. He has published widely in scholarly journals, delivered numerous presentations, and chaired panels in conferences for the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, the American Society of Criminology, the Midwestern Criminal Justice Association, and the Southern Criminal Justice Association, among others. Mbuba’s most recent publication, “Comparative Criminal Justice: International Trends and Practices,” was released in April.
 
“On behalf of Purdue Fort Wayne, I would like to congratulate Dr. Mbuba on receiving this distinction,” said Connie Kracher, director of University Research and Innovation. “We are proud of our faculty scholars as they engage in high impact teaching and other academic activities. Jospeter will be building long-lasting collaborations with his international colleagues and we look forward to learning about these experiences when he returns to Fort Wayne.”
 
According to Fulbright, participation in its scholar programs places award recipients among the ranks of 63 Nobel Prize laureates, 89 Pulitzer Prize winners, 78 MacArthur Fellows, and thousands of leaders across the private, public, and nonprofit sectors.  
 
In April, Purdue Fort Wayne announced Zhuming Bi, a professor of mechanical engineering, had been awarded a Fulbright-Nokia Distinguished Chair in Information and Communications Technologies for the 2023–24 academic year. Bi, who teaches in PFW’s Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering in its College of Engineering, Technology, and Computer Science, is the first PFW faculty member to have earned this appointment. As part of the grant program, he will conduct research on sustainable manufacturing at the Lappeenranta University of Technology in Finland from September to December.  
 
Carlos Pomalaza-Raez, a former PFW professor of radio frequency communications who Bi describes as his “respectful mentor,” received a Fulbright designation of U.S. Scholar for work involving distributed wireless communication networks and wireless communication systems for the 2003–04 academic year. Pomalaza-Raez died in March 2022 at the age of 69.   
 
The PFW university community has also had five students receive a Fulbright student scholarship, the most recent being Chelsea Bihlmeyer in 2021.

For additional information, contact Geoff Thomas at [email protected] or 260-437-7657 (mobile).