This retired University of Arizona professor is going on his 6th Fulbright Scholarship

A retired University of Arizona professor will be hitting the road — again — to teach in another country.

Mark Frederickson teaches architecture, landscape architecture and urban design, but he’s taught those subjects in many more places than Tucson.

He’s used five previous Fulbright Scholarships to teach in places from Oman to Botswana to Prague to Panama to Jordan. His next stop: Kyrgyzstan, in central Asia, where he’ll spend about 10 months.

The Show caught up with Frederickson before he left and started with the fact that he’s headed pretty far from Tucson.

Full conversation

MARK FREDERICKSON: I had to actually look it up on the map. Kyrgyzstan. So, yeah, I’ve had several Fulbrights, and this one is probably one of the more exotic ones that I’ve worked on.

But I had — I taught in Turkey for several years, and several of my students there were Kyrgyzstani, and they’re just a really interesting culture, great students. And now they’re teaching at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, and they invited me over, and we used Fulbright to facilitate that.

MARK BRODIE: Well, so what exactly will you be teaching, and when you’re talking about, you know, maybe projects to do in the capital city, what kind of projects might your students be working on?

MARK FREDERICKSON: The last Fulbright was in Botswana, and I taught pure architecture there. And this is a little bit different. They have landscape architecture and urban design, and they’re thinking about starting an architecture program.

But the project, the river revitalization projects always are a lot of fun. And what we end up doing is looking at the overall city, then zeroing in on the river, and then picking potential sites along the river that might include parks development, park designs, urban interventions, maybe some pieces of architecture, and then individual students can choose those and focus in and work independently. So, the project will have big team kind of thing, then small teams, and then individual work.

MARK BRODIE: Is there something that appeals to you about working in places like Turkey or like Botswana or Kyrgyzstan as opposed to anywhere else?

MARK FREDERICKSON: Well, I loved working here, but one of the things that I’ve always done, I was in Peace Corps a long, long time ago. I’m an old guy now, so this is — this might be one of the last Fulbrights I get.

But what really happens is that we’re able to work on these projects, and the students begin to gain confidence, and the cultural boundaries diminish, and it’s really interesting to watch.

I first started in Tucson a long time ago, and our students didn’t have an opportunity to travel much, and so I began to develop this thing we call Tejido, and it’s really kind of an applied research and community outreach office. So, it gives the students that haven’t had a chance to travel much, haven’t had a chance to be exposed to different cultures, an opportunity to work with other people side-by-side in similar professions.

MARK BRODIE: So, what is your goal for the places where you do these Fulbrights? Like, what do you hope for them to have there when you leave that maybe they didn’t have when you got there?

MARK FREDERICKSON: Well, not to screw it up too bad. A "do no harm" kind of thing, huh? Well, yeah, that’s — we usually give them an array of ideas. This system that we work in doesn’t need money. And so, when you’re working in academia, this Tejido group that we developed, it looks for really juicy projects that would be fun and would be really a challenge to the students and would facilitate their becoming exceptional practicing professionals.

And so, regular practice, professional practice, the economics come to bear, and doesn’t enable them all the time to get into these situations that have these great projects. So, most of our clients don’t have two nickels to rub together. But they’re in a situation where they have some interesting, but dire needs, like in Oman and in Prague, and we can get in there with very little investment, and we can generate design and planning options for a lower price than would a normal practice.

MARK BRODIE: So, who are your clients then?

MARK FREDERICKSON: Well, in Oman, it was Sultan Harthi. He’s the head of the municipal planning agency. And in Panama, for instance, it was the governor of Panama.

MARK BRODIE: So, like public-type figures in these various countries.

MARK FREDERICKSON: Usually. Every once in a while, we’ll work with an independent developer, but that doesn’t occur that often.

MARK BRODIE: It sounds like, and please correct me if I’m wrong, you’re not necessarily going to these places and like just doing a lot of building, for example. It sounds like you’re more going and trying to get the situation to a place where they can then go and do the building themselves, or develop however it is they want to develop.

Like, you’re sort of laying the groundwork and the foundation, pardon the pun, and they, the clients, the places you’re going, are following through and doing the building afterwards?

MARK FREDERICKSON: Yes, that’s probably a good way of saying it, Mark. I’ll use Oman again. Sultan Harthi asked us to come over because he had a very poor neighborhood for laborers, but it was also shared with Omani citizens. So, there was some social issues, strife, going on there. But it was incredibly poor, and incredibly challenging environmentally, no — and he just needed some help developing design and planning ideas, options.

And so, what we do is come in, talk to the clients, talk to the citizens that live there, observe, develop an array of planning and design options, and then we’ll present them to our clients, and then they’ll say, "Oh, we like this one. This one kind of sucks. This one really has an opportunity." We’ll go back and redo them, re-synthesize them, and come up with one or two final design and planning options.

And then they use the documents, they secure the funding, and then they go about hiring the design and planning professionals that hopefully will follow our lead in the design and planning monographs.

MARK BRODIE: Mark Frederickson is a retired professor at the University of Arizona. He’ll spend the next 10 months or so on a Fulbright scholarship teaching in Kyrgyzstan.