Two VCU Professors Earn Fulbright Awards

By Tom Gresham

A researcher and a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University have received Fulbright Scholar grants for the upcoming academic year.

Brian Cassel, Ph.D., a senior analyst in the VCU Massey Cancer Center, and Michael Pitts, D.B.A., associate professor of management in the VCU School of Business, each will travel abroad during the 2011-12 academic year on Fulbright grants. Cassel will travel to England to conduct research, and Pitts will travel to the Slovak Republic to teach.

“We’re very proud of Dr. Cassel and Dr. Pitts for earning the prestigious Fulbright award,” said Beverly Warren, Ed.D., Ph.D., provost and vice president for academic affairs at VCU. “Their experiences abroad will not only be of personal benefit but will greatly enrich our collaborative initiatives at VCU and will strengthen our community partnerships.”

Cassel will travel to London in early 2012 to collaborate with researchers for six months at the King’s College London Cicely Saunders Institute. Cassel’s research will measure the economic impact of end-of-life care in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, focusing on creating a new framework to identify the best approaches to measuring the outcomes of palliative care across the U.S. and U.K. healthcare systems.

As a senior analyst at VCU Massey Cancer Center, Cassel provides strategic planning, program evaluation, quality assurance and financial analyses of all oncology-related programs, including palliative care, at the VCU Medical Center. Cassel also is a cancer prevention and control researcher at Massey, and his research focuses on the clinical and financial outcomes of cancer services and palliative care programs.

“I am honored to work with Dr. Irene Higginson and her colleagues at King’s College London,” Cassel said. “They lead one of the largest and best palliative care centers in the world, and this Fulbright award offers the opportunity for us to develop a long-term, collaborative relationship that fosters continued international research on the outcomes of palliative care in various forms and settings.”

Pitts will travel to the College of Management (Vysoká Skola Manažmentu) in Bratislava, Slovak Republic, to teach courses in strategy and knowledge management to undergraduate and doctoral students during the spring 2012 semester. Pitts specializes in the development of strategic planning systems and has taught in the area of strategic management for more than 30 years.

Pitts has served on the boards of five companies and as a consultant to numerous other organizations. He has previously served as a guest lecturer at universities in Austria and Ireland.

“I am humbled by the opportunity afforded me through the Fulbright award,” Pitts said. “As we transition to a more knowledge-based society, VSM represents the first university in Central Europe to include knowledge management as part of their program. I am looking forward to working with my colleagues in order to better understand how to manage strategically in such an environment.”

The Fulbright Program, America’s flagship international educational exchange program, is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Recipients of Fulbright awards are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields.