Hawaiʻi Community College professor receives Fulbright Fellowship

Posted: Jul 14, 2010

Hawaiʻi Community College is pleased to announce that Trina Nahm-Mijo has been awarded a J. William Fulbright Scholarship for the spring 2011 semester. The scholarship will allow her to teach dance and expressive arts therapy at Tallinn University in Estonia, which is located on the Baltic coast about 60 miles from Finland.

 

The purpose of the Fulbright Program is to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of the more than 150 countries currently participating in the program. Dr. Nahm-Mijo, a psychology professor at Hawaii CC, plans to share her approach to expressive arts therapy, which includes social activism through the arts, to the students she will be teaching in Estonia.

 

Nahm-Mijo just returned from Korea where she was invited to teach Expressive Arts workshops sponsored by the International Korean Art Therapy Association and other universities. In spring 2003, she was a visiting professor at Wonkwang University where she helped build the masters program in art therapy, only the third such graduate program in Korea. She trained over 500 doctors, therapists, counselors, social workers and students all over Korea in dance and expressive arts therapy. Currently, there are 40 graduate programs in art therapy and three undergraduate programs in South Korea.

 

While teaching at Wonkwang University, she was also commissioned to choreograph a street performance to bring attention to the need to pass a disabled rights law similar to the Americans with Disabilities Act in the United States. The performance traveled a mile down the main thoroughfare in Seoul and involved over 60 organizations as well as Nahm-Mijo’s students who danced with 30 meters of fabric and giant masks. This event helped pass the anti-discrimination law for persons with disabilities, and there are now elevators and assistants for disabled persons in every subway station in Korea.

 

Fulbright alumni have become heads of state, judges, ambassadors, cabinet ministers, CEOs, university presidents, journalists, artists and professors. They have been awarded 40 Nobel Prizes since its inception 60 years ago.