NEW YORK – This summer, thirty Greek- and Cypriot-born scholars hailing from a cross-section of twenty-eight prominent United States and Canadian universities are traveling to Greece to conduct academic projects with their peers at Greek universities as part of the Greek Diaspora Fellowship Program. They will work in areas that range from medical physics to curriculum co-development in clinical neurophysiology, and from Anglo-American Modernist Poetry to educational psychology. Thirteen Greek universities were selected to host the fellows for collaborative projects that meet specific needs at their institutions and in their communities, based on proposals submitted by faculty members and administrators at the Greek universities.
With this second round of Fellowships, the program has now selected a total of 51 U.S. and Canadian based academics to collaborate with universities throughout Greece to develop curricula, conduct research, and teach and mentor graduate students in priority areas identified by the Greek universities.
The Greek Diaspora Fellowship Program is designed to help avert Greece’s brain drain and develop long-term, mutually-beneficial collaborations between universities in Greece and the United States and Canada. Launched in 2016, the Fellowship Program is managed by the Institute of International Education (IIE) in collaboration with the Fulbright Foundation in Greece, and funded by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).
Projects supported by this round of Fellowships include:
The University of Crete will host a Fellow from St. Mary’s University- Dr. Evangelina Tastsoglou, and Queens College, City University of New York, Professor Nicholas Alexiou. This collaborative research project will focus on the sociology of culture and the sociological study of earlier and contemporary Greek migratory exodus to the U.S. and Canada. The project will also incorporate graduate student teaching/mentoring and curriculum co-development.
A Fellow from the University of Kentucky, Professor Nikiforos Stamatiadis, will visit the National Technical University of Athens to work on graduate student teaching and mentoring and collaborative research in addressing nighttime road safety issues.
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki will host a Fellow from Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Professor Marianthi Ierapetritou, to assist with collaborative research and graduate student teaching in the area of process systems engineering. The project will focus on product and process synthesis and design, process operations in a dynamic environment and the modeling and optimization of biological systems.
“One of the main goals of the Greek Diaspora Fellowship Program has been to engage productively one of Greece’s most important assets, its diasporic academic community,” said Stelios Vasilakis, Director of Programs and Strategic Initiatives at SNF. “The response and caliber of the Fellows selected for this first iteration of the Program point to the existence of a critical mass of scholars that can contribute significantly to Greek Universities at a critical moment in modern Greek history. This is a collaboration that is mutually beneficial and carries the potential of long term impact and of changing the means of engagement between the motherland and its extensive diaspora.”
“The Stavros Niarchos Foundation’s generous support for these Fellowships demonstrates the Foundation’s commitment to expanding Greece’s human capital and investing in the country’s long-term economic recovery,” said Allan Goodman, President and CEO of the Institute of International Education.
How the Projects and Fellowships Work
All projects are collaborations between the host institution and the visiting Fellow. The proposed scholar and project requests are each evaluated by a review committee based on merit and are subject to approval by the Advisory Council. Fellowships match host universities with Greek- and Cypriot-born scholars.
Host Institutions: Degree conferring institutions in Greece are invited to submit a project request to host a scholar for 14 to 60 days. Prospective hosts may name a proposed scholar with whom they have a preexisting relationship in a project request, but this is not required. If a project request does not name a scholar, IIE will review the roster of qualified Greek- and Cypriot- born academics to fill the university’s stated needs.
Prospective Fellows: IIE maintains a roster of qualified scholars to facilitate matches, according to the discipline, expertise, activities and objectives described in a project request. Candidates are required to have a terminal degree in their field and can hold any academic rank. When a scholar is successfully matched with a selected project, he or she is awarded a Fellowship to conduct a project visit to the host institution. The Fellowship includes a daily stipend, transportation, a housing allowance and health insurance coverage during the specified length of the project visit. Scholar applicants are also encouraged to contact universities to explore collaborative projects.
The complete list of this year’s hosts, fellows, and projects is available online: www.iie.org. More information on the application process is available via email: greekdiaspora@iie.org.
The post SNF-Funded Greek Diaspora Fellowship Program Selects 30 Diaspora Fellows appeared first on The National Herald.