Alone in the middle of the Indian Ocean, the Republic of Maldives boasts clear blue seas, solitary sandy beaches and remote island resorts. The qualities that make the island nation a perfect postcard tourist destination, however, also made it vulnerable when the tsunami stuck its shores in December 2004, putting a quarter of its island resorts out of service.

In a nation where two-thirds of the jobs are related to tourism, rebuilding the hospitality industry to its pre-tsunami strength has been a concern for all citizens and residents and soon they will be receiving a helping hand from Manchester, New Hampshire.

Ravi Pandit, a hospitality professor at Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester, who has spent 18 years of his working life at the Taj Group, wants to boost tourism to the Maldives and he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to help prepare future managers for the island nation's hospitality and tourism industry.

The Fulbright Programme, which awards the grants to some 6,000 scholars each year, is sponsored by the US Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Pandit's grant will let him to work in the Maldives for five months beginning in August.

He will help create a four-year hospitality programme in the Maldives, a country which boasts of a pristine shoreline and diverse marine life.

When Pandit first arrived at SNHU in 1999, he was the first doctorate in its hospitality programme. He was instrumental in overhauling the undergraduate hospitality and tourism program, and he developed a master's degree programme in hospitality and tourism management.

Pandit came to academia late in life. He started his career in 1977 with a bachelor's degree in economics from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, and no formal hospitality education. He worked for 18 years for the Taj Group and then earned his master's degree in hotel and resort management from the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, and was bitten by the academic bug while teaching as an adjunct professor at a Baltimore community college. He received his doctoral degree from Pennsylvania State University in 1999.

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