BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – It is a brisk morning on the Illinois Wesleyan University campus. Two professors, Saloua Zerhouni and Driss Maghraoui, prepare for classes in an office on the first floor of the Center for Liberal Arts Building on Beecher Street.
“Is it usually this cold this time of year?” asks Zerhouni, the Fulbright Visiting Professor this fall at Illinois Wesleyan. Zerhouni’s husband, Maghraoui, smiles.
The weather today is colder than the mild temperature you could find this time of the year in Morocco, where Zerhouni and Maghraoui teach. She is an assistant professor of political science at the public Mohammed V University, Souissi, in Rabat; and he is an assistant professor of history at the private Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane. They are teaching this semester at Illinois Wesleyan with the help of a grant from the Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program. Though they have both worked in the United States before, this time is different.
The couple, who have been married since 2000, brought more than their academic expertise to Bloomington. They brought their family – Adam, age 7; Ayoub, age 4; and 11-month-old Nouha – in the hopes of creating a greater cultural understanding.