Romanian Alumni Stories
My Fulbright experience at UW Madison, Department of Animal and Dairy Sciences, in the field of animal welfare has profoundly changed my life. I am deeply grateful to my colleagues and PI for their unwavering support and guidance throughout this journey. Their expertise and encouragement have enriched my learning and research experience beyond measure.
"It is about conveying messages, people, and ways for new learning to become possible. It is about a collective resultant and a meaningful community of learning, where diversity accelerates everything, bringing individual projects and work to places where imagining future(s) is possible."
"The Fulbright experience broadened my perspectives and offered valuable insights and connections for my future academic pursuits. Moreover, it inspired ideas that I intend to implement at my university."
"There are many different ways in which Fulbright has enriched my life. I participated in classes, workshops, and presentations, applied advanced new methods in my research, and even attended the largest and most important conference on international education in the world. Yet, in retrospect, the aspect that mattered the most was that I encountered an engaged, diverse, and welcoming academic community."
"My Fulbright Scholarship to the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars was a great opportunity for me as a mature scholar not only to pursue my research interest but also to meet a network of world-class scholars and policymakers in Washington, D.C. and to present some of my work to a global audience."
The University of South Carolina has a big campus with diverse colleges, research units and many activities for students, faculty and the general public. [...] I particularly enjoyed the sense of community inside the university, everybody being helpful and polite, and the structure that made the work process clear and easy to follow. It's been a great pleasure to get to know better a society which functions well as a whole, which invests in research and earns in innovation.
Thanks to the Fulbright Visiting Scholar Program my experience was beyond my wildest dreams. When we hear about the "American Dream," we could only imagine what it takes or how one could be “good enough” to be part of that dream. But this journey offered by the Fulbright Commission seems to be not only a bridge between cultures, but also one between reality and the realm of dreams, because once you find yourself on that bridge, you can feel the most important values of humanity: trust, kindness, stability, honor, care, responsibility and hope.
Fulbright is not just about research and academic events. At least for me, it was also about meeting new people, experiencing the local food, trying to understand different values. For two months my wife and daughter (she is 9) were in Athens with me, and together we were able to travel to Orlando, San Francisco, and Washington. The experiences we had together were extraordinary, and my daughter was impressed enough to declare that she plans to come to college at UGA, probably around 2032.
Living and researching in the U.S. as a Fulbright scholar representing Romania is a life-changing experience, and I truly believe that any student, teacher or researcher should apply. This is an effective way we could use to bring about change in our academic system, both by enriching our education and by developing new educational and cultural relationships.
"Looking back, I realize that the goals, hopes and dreams I had at the beginning of my Fulbright journey were far more modest than what was fully offered to me. Not just from an academic point of view, but the travels that I’ve made, the professors and colleagues I have worked with, the people I met and the entire cultural experience of having lived in the United States for two years, have been an axial part of this experience."