Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College professor engages in Fulbright Scholarship

Aug. 20—TIFTON — It is raining.

Andrew Egan, a professor of forestry at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, is not surprised. After all, it's the rainy season in Nepal where he spent the summer and is now spending this fall as the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship.

"We get rain almost every day," Egan said in a June email. "In fact, it's raining as I write this. That and the severe storms that accompany the rain sometimes knock out power and internet access."

Egan applied for a Fulbright Scholarship when he was doing forestry work with the Peace Corps in the Philippines in 2019. The Fulbright Senior Scholar program is a competitive process that requires a proposal for research and curriculum development and a record of research and teaching, in forest science in his case.

Applications are accepted once each year in the late summer and early fall and are deliberated in Washington D.C. later in the same year with awards announced the following March. Egan was notified of his Fulbright Scholarship in March 2020.

Then came the pandemic.

All Senior Fulbright Scholar awards were postponed indefinitely. Egan and his fellow Peace Corps volunteers were evacuated from the Philippines in March 2020 shortly after he was notified of his Fulbright award.

"The original plan was for me to depart on my award in the fall of 2020," Egan said. "For a while, it looked like the Fulbright Commission, which falls under the U.S. State Department, might have to cancel the worldwide Fulbright Scholar cohort that I was a part of for the 2020 annual awards cycle.

"However, almost at the last moment, the pandemic appeared to clear a bit here in Nepal, and we were back on for 2022. I began my seven-month posting at the end of May and will be returning to the U.S. and ABAC around the first of January."

At the time of his email, Egan was posted in Pokhara at the Institute of Forestry, which offers bachelor's, master's and Ph.D. forestry programs. He was a Senior Fulbright Scholar there for five months in 2004.

"Several of my students from that time are now faculty members here at the Institute of Forestry," Egan said.

Egan also works at the Institute of Forestry's two other campuses in Kathmandu and Hetauda. He was just in Hetauda for a week to teach some graduate forest biometrics classes.

When Nepal comes to mind, most folks think of Mount Everest and Sherpas and the top of the world. Egan hasn't climbed Everest and the elevation in Pokhara is about 3,000 feet above sea level, which is quite a bit short of the 29,000 feet above sea level where Everest sits.

"Pokhara is located in the middle hills region, wedged between the terai, lowlands in the south, just north of India, and the Himal regions," Egan said. "The weather clears up more consistently in September, at which point one can see the Himalaya range more clearly almost every day for several months until rainy season kicks in again in June."

Egan said he enjoys his interaction with ABAC students when he's dealing with forestry classes in Tifton. On the other side of the world, he finds that the students share the same curiosity about learning.

"The students here are extremely curious, grateful and funny," he said. "I enjoy every minute of those interactions, just as I do with ABAC's forestry students. Although the nation and the Institute of Forestry, which is one of five institutes in Nepal's large, public Tribhuvan University, struggle economically, we all try to make it work with what we have."

Although his physical self is in Nepal, Egan continues to make things happen in the United States. His book, "Haywire: Discord in Maine's Logging Woods and the Unraveling of an Industry," was just published by the University of Massachusetts Press and is available on Amazon.

"'Haywire' is based, in part, on my early experiences as a logger and, later, a field forester in New England, as well as my research and the works of many others," Egan said. "It attempts to bring a sense of cohesion and coherence to a post-World War II history of forests, rural communities, woods labor and industry as Maine enters a period of uncertainty in its struggling forestry sector."

Egan said he devoted countless hours to the book, and he views the publication with a great sense of relief.

"The book represents a lot of work, and I am glad that it's finally seeing the light of day," he said.