Fulbright institute beckons ASU’s Fellner to Bulgaria

August 11, 2008

Dan Fellner, a faculty associate in the School of Applied Arts and Sciences, and Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, has been selected to teach a course in public relations at the Fulbright International Summer Institute (FISI) in Tryavna, Bulgaria.<separator></separator>FISI is an academic and cultural program created by the Bulgarian-American Fulbright Commission in 2002 that offers one-week intensive courses in a wide variety of subject areas.<separator></separator>From Aug. 11-15, Fellner will be teaching a course called “Public Relations: It Can Make or Break an Organization.” More than 30 students from 11 countries have enrolled in his course.<separator></separator>This will be Fellner’s fifth teaching stint in Eastern Europe. As a Fulbright scholar in Latvia and Moldova, and a Fulbright senior specialist in Lithuania, he has taught university courses in journalism and public relations and conducted training programs for media professionals.<separator></separator>Fellner has more than 25 years of experience in corporate public relations, television news and university teaching. He has been a faculty associate at ASU since 1998 and owns a public relations consulting business.<separator></separator>On the way to Bulgaria, Fellner plans to stop in Kosovo to visit the “world’s newest country.” Fellner, who teaches a course at ASU’s Polytechnic campus titled International Mass Communication, says “these kinds of trips give me a lot of fodder for class discussions.”<separator></separator>Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, media systems in Eastern Europe basically have been built from scratch, Fellner says.<separator></separator>The trip is funded by the Humanities and Arts program at the Polytechnic campus, and ASU’s Melikian Center for Russian, Eurasian and East European Studies, of which Fellner is a faculty affiliate.