Fulbright's Fantasy: How I Spent My Summer Minding The Gap

Everyone has their own war. Like a lot of baby boomers, my war was Vietnam. I can remember sitting in a deadly silent fraternity house while birthdates and draft numbers scrolled by like some sort of life lottery.

Other memories, like people fleeing to Canada, the National Guard Game, the 2-S tango, still stick in my mind. I have vivid memories of the hearings held by the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, J. William Fulbright, in 1966, questioning the wisdom of the war and our interventionalist polices. This was particularly ironic given that Fulbright was one of two Senate sponsors of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution just two years earlier.

Some forty odd years later, like a lot of things that come full circle, I had the opportunity to spend the summer at Kings College London as one of the 280,000 other "Fulbrighter's" who have participated in the program since its inception in 1946.

The Fulbright Program is offered by the US State Dept as a global cultural and scientific exchange program and, in 2021, is celebrating its 75th anniversary. There are several types of Fulbright Scholarships. I was selected for the Senior Scholars program which is designed for faculty who want to spend between 2 and 6 weeks teaching and learning at a foreign host institution in their specialty discipline, like mine, bioentrepreneurship. Senior Scholars are eligible to do two tours in a 5 year period and this was my first.

The Senior Scholars application and acceptance process involves three steps. As the first step, you apply to be included on the Senior Scholars Roster. Following that, your availability is announced to potential host countries and they apply for your expertise. If there is a match, you are required to submit a program plan describing what you will do, when you will do it and what the expected outcomes and goals will be. And before you know it, you're on your way to a once-in -a-lifetime adventure.

The State Dept pays for your transportation and pays you a weekly stipend. Let me take this opportunity to thank all of you taxpayers. The host institution, in my case Kings Business, the technology commercialization office of Kings College London, pays for lodging, transportation in the country and a per diem meals allowance. That's why I stayed in the student dorms while I was there. Did I mention it had its own bathroom and was across the street from the Pig in the Poke pub?

I worked with about 35 technology transfer and business development managers under the tutelage of my sponsor, and now lifetime friend, George Murlewski, a former long term BP manager, who went to the ivory tower and took a crack at getting academics to understand how to create life science spin outs.

My days were spent networking, working with faculty and staff, lecturing, doing assessments and most weekends visiting other technology transfer programs in the UK including some in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Southampton, Oxford and Cambridge. I also spent some time at the London Business School and Imperial College. If you are ever in Deal on the East Coast of Kent, I highly recommend visiting the Hole in the Roof pub , run by the brother of the former British Consulate in Denver.

Here are my impressions at the end of the experience in Part 1 and Part 2.

I continue to work with people I met, collaborating with my faculty colleagues , and continuing to build the bridges as a program ambassador that Fulbright envisioned when he created the program.

By serving on the board of the Colorado Chapter of the Fulbright Association I am passing it forward.

Spending some in the gap is great idea. Some colleges are now making it easier for students to take a gap year. COVID has forced people to take time off from work and companies should do more to normalize career breaks and sabbaticals.

??In recent years, the number of employers offering sabbaticals has grown exponentially. In addition, many more workers, especially employees in managerial and professional roles, are taking their own unpaid sabbaticals when their organizations fail to offer them. Both groups need to know: What are the major benefits of a sabbatical? And how can a sabbatical be structured to maximize its benefits? Research shows that there are three types of sabbaticals people take, for different reasons and with different outcomes. Further, organizations looking to motivate and retain employees can smartly incorporate sabbaticals into their offerings.

Sometimes you need to explain resume gaps. I spent my gap minding the gap.

If you ever want to spend your senior year abroad, it's never too late and I highly recommend it. Cheers.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs on Substack and editor of Digital Health Entrepreneurship