Fulbright at 75: A Global Response to Global Opportunities and Challenges

On May 18th, the Romanian-U.S. Fulbright Commission honored 75 years since the global Fulbright Program was initiated and 60+ years of its presence in Romania through the virtual event titled “Fulbright at 75: A Global Response to Global Opportunities and Challenges.”

The celebration, moderated by Executive Director Mircea Dumitru, brought together distinguished U.S. and Romanian high officials, Fulbright alumni, partners, and friends who joined us online to mark this significant milestone.

We were honored to be joined by Acting Assistant Secretary Matthew Lussenhop, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Minister of Foreign Affairs Bogdan Aurescu, Scott A Reese, Public Affairs Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Romania, and Nicolae-Victor Zamfir, President of the Romanian-U.S. Fulbright Commission’s Board of Directors, for the welcome and opening remarks.

Romanian & U.S. alumni E. Patrick McDermott, Vlad Mixich, Amy Liu, Kathleen Laraia McLaughlin, Ioana Mischie, and Augustin Ioan shared their thoughts on the impact and significance of the worldwide Fulbright Program and its role in the development of academic and cultural relations between Romania and the U.S., as exemplified through their professional and personal Fulbright stories.

The event was live-streamed and is available at:

https://www.facebook.com/FulbrightRomania/videos/858346284751770

The event is part of the Fulbright Country Day initiative launched by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs to celebrate the 75th Anniversary. The Fulbright Program’s success is based on a sustained commitment to international bilateral partnerships and shared priorities. Fulbright Days celebrate the impact of these important partnerships across the globe. More details about the events and activities planned by organizations around the world to mark this important milestone are available at: https://fulbright75.org/.

Full Schedule & Bios

6:00 – 6:30 p.m.       Welcome and opening remarks

Moderator: Mircea Dumitru, Executive Director of the Romanian-U.S. Fulbright Commission

• Acting Assistant Secretary Matthew Lussenhop, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State
• Bogdan Aurescu, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania
• Scott A Reese, Public Affairs Counselor, U.S. Embassy in Romania
• Nicolae-Victor Zamfir, President of the Romanian-U.S. Fulbright Commission’s Board of Directors

6:30 – 7:30 p.m.       Romanian & U.S. alumni share their Fulbright stories, talking about how this experience has influenced and enriched their lives and about the manner in which the Fulbright Program has contributed to shaping the world over the 75 years of existence

• E. Patrick McDermott, Professor of Management and Legal Studies at Franklin P. Perdue School of Business, Salisbury University
• Vlad Mixich, Health Policy Expert and Writer; European Investment Bank Project Advisory Support unit & European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA)
• Amy Liu, Associate Professor, Department of Government, University of Texas at Austin
• Kathleen Laraia McLaughlin, Senior Lecturer, Loyola Marymount University, Artist & Photographer
• Ioana Mischie, Transmedia Artist (Writer/Director)
• Augustin Ioan, Architect & Professor, “Ion Mincu” University of Architecture and Urban Planning

Bios

Matthew Lussenhop
Acting Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State

Matthew Lussenhop joined the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State (PDAS) in July 2019 and is currently the Acting Assistant Secretary. He is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, class of Minister-Counselor, and has served his country as a Foreign Service Officer since 1990.
Prior to his arrival at ECA, he served as Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) at the Embassy of the United States to the Kingdom of Belgium, August 2016 – June 2019, including 18 months as Chargé d’affaires. From 2013 – 16, he was the DCM at the U.S. Embassy to the Kingdom of Morocco, including ten months as the Chargé d’affaires. Mr. Lussenhop previously served in ECA as a Senior Advisor for Policy from 2011-13.
Mr. Lussenhop has served in the field of public diplomacy and strategic communications in numerous posts overseas, including Public Affairs Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan from 2010-11. Other overseas assignments include positions at U.S. embassies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Kuwait; Muscat, Oman; Rabat, Morocco; Sofia, Bulgaria; and Manila, Philippines.
In Washington, D.C., Mr. Lussenhop has served in the State Department’s Bureau of Near East and North African Affairs, and as Director of Public Diplomacy Training at the Foreign Service Institute.
Mr. Lussenhop is the recipient of multiple State Department Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards. He speaks Arabic and French, and is a native of Minnesota and a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities.

Bogdan Aurescu
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania

Bogdan Aurescu was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania on November 4, 2019. He is a career diplomat (since 1996) and holds the diplomatic rank of ambassador (since 2014).
He is a member of the UN International Law Commission, for the 2017-2022 mandate.
From May 2016 to November 2019, Bogdan Aurescu was Presidential Advisor for Foreign Policy to the President of Romania. Between November 2014 and November 2015 he was the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania.
He also served as Secretary of State in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, managing the fields of strategic affairs (2009-2010; 2012-2014), European affairs (2004-2005; 2010-2012) and global affairs (March – June 2012).
During 2010-2011, Bogdan Aurescu acted as chief negotiator of the Romanian-American Agreement on missile defense and the Joint Declaration on the Strategic Partnership for the 21st Century between Romania and the USA.
Bogdan Aurescu is also a university professor within the Department of Public Law of the Faculty of Law of the University of Bucharest, where he teaches International Public Law, International Organizations and Relations, International Jurisdictions.
He is the president of the Romanian Branch of the International Law Association (London), editor-in-chief of the Romanian Journal of International Law and author of numerous books, studies and articles.
Bogdan Aurescu was decorated with the National Order Star of Romania in the rank of Officer (2013) and the Emblem of Honor of the Romanian General Staff (2013) as well as with several prestigious National Orders of several European countries.

Scott A. Reese
Public Affairs Counselor, U.S. Embassy in Romania

Scott joined the Department of State in 2004 and has worked as the Cultural Affairs Officer in Bucharest since July, 2017. He served his first tour in Oslo as a consular officer. Scott then served two years in Bamako, Mali, as a consular and political officer. Following Bamako, Scott served one year as the political and governance chief on the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Mosul, Iraq. He then served as a press officer in at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. In 2015, Scott served as the Deputy Spokesperson at the Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. He then served as the Spokesperson at the U.S. Consulate in Erbil, Iraq.

Prior to joining the Department, Scott worked in the IT field as a systems administrator and programmer, eventually switching to educational technology, working and teaching at the University of Iowa. He then worked at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts and began PhD studies in Systems Engineering at Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. In the two years immediately prior to joining the Foreign Service, Scott taught math and algebra to high school students with behavioral problems in Albany, New York.

Nicolae-Victor Zamfir
President of the Romanian-U.S. Fulbright Commission’s Board of Directors

Acad. Nicolae-Victor Zamfir is a distinguished international scientist in Nuclear Physics, President of the Physics Section of the Romanian Academy, member of Academia Europaea, author of over 300 articles in ISI journals, over 8,000 citations, and over 200 presentations and invited lectures at International Conferences.
Prof. Zamfir was the general director of the “Horia Hulubei” National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering (IFIN-HH) and the project director and main initiator of the Extreme Light Infrastructure – Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) project, an achievement for which he received several awards and distinctions, among which the title of Grand Officer of the French Order of the Legion of Honor.
Prof. Zamfir has over 40 years of research experience in reputable universities and institutes, among which IFIN-HH, Köln University (Germany), Brookhaven National Laboratory (USA), Wright Nuclear Structure Laboratory at Yale University (USA).

Mircea Dumitru
Executive Director, Romanian-U.S. Fulbright Commission

Professor Mircea Dumitru was appointed the Executive Director of the Romanian-U.S. Fulbright Commission in January 2020.
Prof. Dumitru was the Rector of the University of Bucharest between 2011 and 2019 and held the position of Minister of Education and Scientific Research from July 2016 to January 2017.
He is a member of the Romanian Academy since 2014 and a Fellow of Academia Europaea since 2019. He has previously held the position of President of the European Society of Analytic Philosophy and is currently the President of the International Institute of Philosophy.
Professor Dumitru was a Fulbright grantee at Tulane University (1993-1994) where he received his PhD in Philosophy in 1998 with a dissertation on incompleteness in modal logic.
He is also a Doctor in Philosophy of the University of Bucharest. His research focuses on philosophical logic, metaphysics, and philosophy of language. He authored or edited 15 books and authored over 50 journal papers and chapters on topics such as modal logic, theories of truth, meaning, rationality, contemporary logic, realism, essentialism, and relativism.

FULBRIGHT ALUMNI

E. Patrick McDermott
U.S. Fulbright Scholar, University of Bucharest, 2018-2019

Dr. E. Patrick McDermott is a Professor of Management and Legal Studies at the Franklin P. Perdue School of Business. He is also a principal in the Law Office of E. Patrick McDermott LLC in Annapolis, Maryland. Prior to academe he served as Legal Counsel at major companies including The Walt Disney Company, Johnson and Johnson and Pan-American World Airways. In 2018-2019 Dr. McDermott was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Bucharest. In 2007-2008, he was a Fulbright Scholar at East China University of Politics and Economics in Shanghai, China.
Professor McDermott has written extensively on workplace conflict resolution, mediation, arbitration, and negotiation. He has served as a consultant for over twenty years for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and is currently researching the use, and effectiveness, of Zoom and other digital platforms in the mediation of legal disputes at the EEOC.
He continues his collaboration with his Romanian colleagues. In the fall of 2020, his Negotiation course students joined with students from the School of Law in Bucharest. Working in mixed teams, they participated in a real time cross-Atlantic Zoom negotiation of a contract dispute between a vaccine manufacturer and distributor. His current research includes collaboration on a comparative study of negotiation and dispute resolution in the Romanian and U.S. legal systems with Professor Adriana Almasan at the School of Law.

Vlad Mixich
Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University, 2018-2019

Vlad Mixich is a health policy expert and writer. He currently works for the European Investment Bank Project Advisory Support unit and serves as an independent health policy expert appointed by the European Parliament to the Management Board of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA). His health policy experience includes projects in seven countries, working with and within international organizations. He was Vice President of the Romanian National Agency for Medicines and Medical Devices and senior advisor to the Minister of Health.
With a degree in Medicine, Vlad holds a master’s degree in international health policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science (UK). As a Humphrey-Fulbright fellow, he specialized in public health policy and management at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health.
Besides his professional activities, Vlad is a published author. He was editorial director of the main medical publication in Romania and his writings were awarded several national and European prizes.

Amy Liu
U.S. Fulbright Scholar, University of Bucharest, 2015-2016

Amy Liu (PhD Emory University; BA Smith College) is an associate professor in the Government Department at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research and teaching focus on the intersection of ethnic politics, language politics, and migration politics. Her first book Standardizing Diversity: The Political Economy of Language Regimes (2015, University of Pennsylvania) examines how the recognition of lingua francas can be conducive for economic growth – in Asia generally and in Southeast Asia specifically. Her second book The Language of Political Incorporation: Chinese Migrants in Europe (2021, Temple University Press) – funded in part by a Fulbright Scholarship to Romania – looks at the linguistic networks of Chinese migrants and the implications for engagement with local authorities in Europe. She is working on a new book project examining the diversity and representation of government cabinets. Starting fall 2021, she will assume co-directorship of the Politics of Race/Ethnicity Lab at the University of Texas at Austin.

Kathleen Laraia McLaughlin
U.S. Fulbright Scholar (2002-2003) & Fulbright Specialist (2019), University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca

Kathleen Laraia McLaughlin is a mother, photographer, and educator with an appetite for exploring the world. Wherever she goes, she brings a compassionate and curious lens. Her images have appeared in National Geographic Traveler, LensWork, Black + White Photography (UK), and The Times Saturday Magazine (UK). Her photographs have been exhibited both nationally and internationally and are in the permanent collections at the Museum of Photographic Art in San Diego, Western Virginia Museum of Art, and the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest. The Color of Hay: The Peasants of Maramures is Kathleen’s first monograph of photographs.
For her efforts at capturing a disappearing traditional world in Romania, she has received grants from Fulbright Specialist Program (2019), Fulbright-Hayes (2015), Honghe China Photography Festival (2014), Romanian Cultural Institute (2013), Xiang Sha Wan China Photography Festival (2011), Houston Center for Photography (2004), United States Fulbright Senior Scholarship Program (2003), and the IREX (Individual Advanced Research Opportunities) Fellowship Program (2003).
She lives and works in the Los Angeles area where she is a Senior Lecturer at Loyola Marymount University and Adjunct Faculty at the New York Film Academy.

Ioana Mischie
Fulbright Student Researcher, University of Southern California, 2017-2018

Ioana Mischie is a Romanian-born transmedia artist (screenwriter/director) and transmedia futurist, multi-awarded for filmmaking, VR and innovative concepts. Fulbright Grantee Alumna of USC School of Cinematic Arts and Alumna of UNATC, advanced the transmedia storytelling field as part of her doctoral study thesis completed with Summa Cum Laude.
Her cinematic projects as writer/director have traveled to more than 150 festivals worldwide (Palm Springs ISFF, Hamptons IFF, Thessaloniki IFF) and were developed in top-notch international programs (Berlinale Talents – Script Station, Sundance Workshop – Capalbio, Cannes International Screenwriters Pavilion), receiving awards from international playgrounds such as The Webby Awards, Golden Drums, South by Southwest Hackathon. She has successfully collaborated as a writer/director with Channel 4 in the UK and with the Oscars-awarded production company Legende Films.
Co-founder and Head of STORYSCAPES, an NGO focusing on transmedia storytelling since 2012, member of Women in Film and Television Los Angeles and member of Global Shapers Bucharest Hub, an initiative by the World Economic Forum. While in love with sharing good practices and collaborative learning, Ioana is teaching digital media arts and virtual reality at both UNATC and UBB as a Ph.D. lecturer.
Among her recent original transmedia franchises, she has created Government of Children (3D film, web, XR), a pioneering expanded storyworld empowering children to see themselves as leaders and to redesign their society and the VR franchise Tangible Utopias. Envisioning the world as a neo-creative playground, she deeply believes that storytellers are “the architects of the future” (Buckminster Fuller).

Augustin Ioan
Fulbright Visiting Scholar, University of Cincinnati, 2003-2004 & 2011-2012

Professor Augustin Ioan, BA, MA, MSArch, PhD, teaches at the University of Architecture and Planning in Bucharest, Romania since 1990.
A former junior and senior Fulbright scholar at the University of Cincinnati, OH (where he also taught as a visiting professor), he is also adjunct professor at SPOTS, Etna, CA since 2018, and lectured at UCLA, Columbia University, Catholic University in Washington, DC, Washington University in Seattle, North Carolina State University in Raleigh, NC.
Professor Ioan published extensively at home and abroad, including Symbols and Language in Sacred Christian Architecture (with Radu Dragan, The Edwin Mellen Press, Lewinston, NY, 1993) and Sacred Space, Center for Traditionalist Orthodox Studies, Etna, CA, 2002.
He won the competition for the Orthodox Cathedral in Bucharest, Romania (unbuilt, 2002), while his built project for a cathedral with royal necropola in Curtea de Argeș (2008-2016) brought him the Romanian Academy Prize for architecture in 2017.