Article
September 22, 2025
Written by Duard Headley
Faculty Fulbrights Offer Global Journey with a Personal Impact
From alpacas to climate change and hurricanes, two UNC faculty members share the transformative lessons from their one-of-a-kind research experiences
Since its launch in 1946, the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program has served as the United States’ flagship international education initiative. Through the program, students and faculty are given the opportunity to visit one of over 135 countries around the world to conduct research and participate in cultural exchanges.
Being selected as a Fulbright participant is a coveted and highly prestigious honor within academia.
It’s natural, then, that one might assume Fulbright trips are composed entirely of highly-structured research and mingling exclusively with distinguished scholars from around the world.
But for two UNC faculty members who set out on Fulbright trips over the past summer, the reality was something far different.
Sharon Bywater-Reyes, associate professor of Environmental Geoscience, spent the summer months living above the clouds, amidst llamas and alpacas in a remote and largely unstudied region of the Chilean highlands. She was looking into how the area’s unique wetlands could contribute to fighting climate change through novel hydrological and geomorphic research in a remote region lacking such studies.
Karen Barton, professor of Geography, GIS and Sustainability, had her research venture completely turned on its head – a trip that started out with the goal of studying renewable energy and the sustainable use of ocean resources in the island nation of Cabo Verde turned into a disaster relief effort in the wake of a massive storm and flooding that slammed the region.
Karen Barton is no stranger to the world of Fulbrights.
When she left Colorado to travel to Cabo Verde for the summer, the trip marked her 11th Fulbright-sponsored research venture.
Less familiar for her is being a part of a disaster relief team, providing shelter, supplies and cleanup care to a community ravaged by a massive storm that led to widespread flooding – the same storm that would go on to develop into Hurricane Erin as it swept towards North America.
But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves.
Barton’s Fulbright trip started out as expected; she arrived in Cabo Verde, an island nation located approximately 300 miles off the coast of West Africa, and set to work studying the “blue economy” – anything relating to the sustainable use of marine resources, renewable energy and more.
“It was absolutely fascinating to me because they were and are doing so much work in the areas of solar and wind, but in ways that are decentralized – so in small scale communities,” Barton said.
Barton’s aim was to strengthen those communities’ ability to collaborate and connect with one another.
“My big goal was to build something that was more regional and that helped amplify the work that Africans are already doing,” Barton said. “Celebrating their successes, because very often they’re doing it better than we are.”
As she worked, the focus of her project shifted slightly – away from exclusively working with the blue economy and more toward the sustainable agricultural projects taking place on the islands themselves.
“One of the most exciting things we’re working on is a project aimed at capturing water from fog in the clouds in high elevation areas,” Barton said. “I got to work with Dr. Marco Cruz, a mechanical engineer, whose help was instrumental, as well as local farmers to build prototypes to help get water to their farms in the highlands.”
It’s Barton’s hope that, through projects like these, exchanges will be built between Cabo Verde and Colorado.
She recently submitted an application for a U.S. Embassy grant that would allow UNC to bring a mechanical engineer from Cabo Verde to Greeley to learn about Colorado farming techniques and technologies, with the eventual goal of returning and sharing what they learn with communities back on the islands.
Despite all the work she was involved with, Barton’s trip wasn’t without some opportunities for recreation, as well.
“I spent a whole lot of time swimming,” Barton said.
At home, Barton can often be found in the water, and she frequently trains in long-distance swimming.
“Some of my closest friends were those people in the diving communities there, and I learned that a lot of their friends didn’t know how to swim. So they see this non-native swimming in the sea for a couple of hours at a time, and they said, ‘you know what? You should teach us how to swim.’”
Those connections with the diving community and beyond would soon come in handy, as, while Barton was visiting the islands, a storm and flash flood struck without warning.
One night, as Barton was attending a graduation ceremony at the Universidade Técnica do Atlântico, the institution that was hosting her during her Fulbright trip, the first signs of the impending storm began to appear.
“I was with two of my closest friends, standing at this beautiful ceremony,” Barton said. “And it was like the night of the Titanic, because we were celebrating, but none of us had any idea what was in store.”
Over the next few days, the initial atmospheric disturbance would start to snowball, eventually culminating in the massive storm that would come to be known as Hurricane Erin. On the island, the storm led to nearly eight inches of rainfall, devastating communities used to much, much less precipitation.
Once the disaster hit the island, the focus of Barton’s work shifted dramatically.
In collaboration with members of the local diving community and others, she began to work on disaster relief efforts for the Cabo Verde. As the islands reeled from the damage done by the storm, immediate support was needed – debris cleanup, pollution removal and getting supplies out to the communities that were hit the hardest.
“I went into the Swiss Red Cross and said, ‘hey, look, I’m an American. I work in disasters. I’ve worked in Nepal on a disaster before. Do you need help?’” Barton said. “And they said, ‘we need all the help we can get.’”
So that’s exactly what she did.
“I got on the back of a motorcycle and just went out and delivered food, water, masks – whatever people needed. There was no power, no water, and sewage and diesel in the streets.”
In the wake of the disaster, the communities throughout Cabo Verde were able to pull together, an effort Barton said she was honored to be a part of.
“For me, Cabo Verde was about optimism,” Barton said. “I’ve been around for long enough to sometimes be a little jaded. But even in the wake of that storm, the people of Cabo Verde were so incredibly optimistic about what was possible.”
All said, Barton reflects that the trip, while not being what she expected at the outset, was incredibly impactful for her.
“It made me realize that, even at this stage in my career, there’s still room for growth,” Barton said. “Even after all these years in my field, I’m ready to do something new. There’s still room for growth in all of us.”
Nestled high in the Andes Mountains of Chile, Peru, and Bolivia, a landscape of wetlands unlike anywhere else in the world lies almost ignored, seemingly forgotten by most people and scientists alike. Home to communities of indigenous people, including the Aymara, who farm the land and graze llamas, alpacas and sheep onthe region’s lush, cushion-like vegetation.
These wetlands, called bofedales, make up a tiny percentage of the world’s land surface. But according to Sharon Bywater-Reyes, they just might hold a secret that has a massive impact on global climate change.
Bywater-Reyes set out on her Fulbright journey with a mission in mind.
“I said, ‘I want to do some science that matters for people and the environment,’” Bywater-Reyes said. “I knew that was really broad, but I also knew that gave me a ton of possibilities.”
When she arrived in Chile, those possibilities began to take shape in the form of charting, analyzing and understanding the importance of the bofedales wetlands. Bywater-Reyes hoped to discover ways to keep the ecosystems healthy and protected, not only for the people who live there, but also to preserve the wetlands’ vital function in the global carbon cycle.
“If the wetlands stay healthy, they function as carbon sinks. But if they become unhealthy, that carbon starts to leak out into the atmosphere,” Bywater-Reyes said. “And the type of wetland they are, as well as the type of peat they produce, isn’t very well recognized in scientific literature. Most wetland research is very Euro or North America-centric.”
And as she started her field work, she noticed something unusual – much of the foundational hydrological and geomorphic documentation for the region simply didn’t exist.
“These wetlands are an incredibly important part of the global carbon cycle, but they’ve been mostly ignored and not really quantified at all,” Bywater-Reyes said. “It was strange, but being out there, I almost felt like some of the earlier geomorphologists to be out working in the field. I was able to go out and document geomorphic conditions for the very first time.”
As she gradually uncovered more about the bofedales, a realization began to form – for thousands of years, the indigenous peoples living in the region had maintained, managed and protected the wetlands. The people, their animals and their very livelihoods were fundamentally tied to the health of the region overall.
“I found myself sitting on the hearth of [my host’s] adobe fireplace, eating alpaca meat right next to where they had been raised,” Bywater-Reyes said. “I remember thinking how vital these animals were to the wetlands themselves through grazing and maintaining plant life balance, and even more so, how vital the indigenous people were for maintaining both the animals and the wetlands.”
With that in mind, Bywater-Reyes set out to better understand how different factors, both natural and man-made, could impact the health of the bofedales so as to best ensure the area is protected for generations to come.
Through this work, Bywater-Reyes got a chance to engage with Aymara culture, an experience she credits as the best part of the trip, hands down.
“In the town I was in, every weekend, there was some cultural event or festival. It was so vibrant and wonderful,” Bywater-Reyes said. “There are cultural events all the time, in a way and with a frequency that we really don’t have here.”
One festival in particular stood out to her as she reflected on her trip.
“One day, when I was driving up into the mountains to do research, there ended up being dangerous weather – lighting and storms – and we had to come back early,” Bywater-Reyes said. “But by chance, on our way back, in this middle-of-nowhere, tiny village, they were having this incredible, beautiful, vibrant cultural festival. I would never have been able to participate in that if we hadn’t been forced to come back early.”
The journey to Chile was Bywater-Reyes’ first Fulbright experience, and it was one she said she’ll never forget.
“It felt like such a genuine cultural exchange,” Bywater-Reyes said. “We weren’t tourists, we weren’t in the well-traveled areas of these countries; we were there connecting with real people on issues that mattered to them. It’s an experience I hope that many others are able to have after me.”
