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ASU faculty member headed to Bulgaria on Fulbright Scholar grant


portrait of ASU faculty associate Dan Fellner
August 06, 2014

Dan Fellner, a faculty associate in the Interdisciplinary Humanities and Communication unit in the School of Letters and Sciences at ASU's Polytechnic campus, has received a five-month Fulbright Scholar grant to Bulgaria. He will be teaching courses in journalism and communications at the American University in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, during the spring semester of 2015.

This is Fellner’s third Fulbright Scholar grant to Eastern Europe; his prior grants were to Latvia and Moldova. Additionally, he has received two Fulbright Senior Specialist grants to teach at universities in Lithuania and Latvia, and has taught a one-week intensive course in communications four times at the Fulbright International Summer Institute in Bulgaria, including in August 2014.

“I’ve been traveling to Eastern Europe since 1991 and have enjoyed witnessing firsthand such a dramatic transformation in the region since the fall of Communism,” Fellner said. “Through the Fulbright program, I feel that I have learned so much about a fascinating and often misunderstood part of the world, and have been able to share this expertise with my students at ASU.”

Fellner, who resides in Chandler, joined ASU as a faculty associate in 1998 and currently teaches courses in communications and English. Fellner is also a faculty affiliate with ASU's Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies, and teaches courses in Eastern Europe and travel writing for ASU’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. In 2011 he was named to the Road Scholars Speakers Bureau of the Arizona Humanities Council, and he also gives presentations about Eastern Europe to audiences throughout Arizona.

Prior to joining ASU, Fellner worked in television news in four different cities, and spent ten years in corporate public relations as the spokesman for the Dow Chemical Company. He also works as a freelance travel writer and photographer, and has had more than 60 travel articles published in various newspapers and magazines.

The prestigious Fulbright Scholar Program provides approximately 800 teaching and/or research grants to U.S. faculty and experienced professionals in a wide variety of academic and professional fields in over 125 countries worldwide. It is funded by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. For more information visit, http://www.cies.org/.