Dr. Cheryl A. Logan, a professor in the Department of Psychology, has been awarded a Fulbright Scholar grant to conduct research at the University of Vienna between March and July.

While in Austria, she will work on the project “‘Productive’ versus ‘Selectionist’ Eugenics: Paul Kammerer and Social Welfare Programs in Interwar Vienna.”

The project is an extension of Logan’s longstanding interest in the roles of heredity and environment in human development – the nature vs. nurture question.

“I’ve always been interested in the nature/nurture problem,” Logan says. “I think it’s vitally important for people to understand that problem because of the damage done by oversimplifying the relationship between nature and nurture.”

That damage includes the eugenics movement – the effort to “improve” the human race by preventing the “genetically unfit” from having children. Many states, including North Carolina, operated eugenics programs for much of the 20th century and sterilized tens of thousands of people.

Kammerer, a Viennese biologist, promoted the idea that acquired traits can be inherited. He committed suicide in 1926 shortly after another scientist claimed to have discredited his most famous experiment.

Logan plans to explore Kammerer’s influence on politics. Her hypothesis is that his research offered a scientific basis for the progressive social programs advocated by the Austrian socialists. With Kammerer dead and discredited, those programs lost momentum.

Logan is one of more than 800 U.S. faculty and professionals who will travel abroad this year through the Fulbright Scholar Program. Established in 1946 under legislation introduced by the Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the program’s purpose is to build mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries.

The Fulbright Program, America’s flagship international educational exchange activity, is sponsored by the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. During its 57 years, the program has sent thousands of U.S. faculty and professionals abroad to teach or do research.

Recipients of Fulbright Scholar awards are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement and because they have demonstrated extraordinary leadership potential in their fields.

Among thousands of prominent Fulbright Scholar alumni are Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize-winning economist; Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); Rita Dove, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet; and Craig Barrett, CEO of Intel Corporation.