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Dr. Dane S. Claussen, Professor and Graduate Program Director, School of Communication, has been named by the Fulbright Specialists Program (FSP) to a five-year term on its Specialists roster of U.S. academic experts and specialists.

He is the first professor in the history of Point Park University to be appointed as a Fulbright Specialist.

FSP is sponsored by the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, and administered by the Council for International Exchange of Scholars (CIES), a division of the International Institute of Education. According to the FSP Web page:

"The Fulbright Specialists Program (FSP) promotes linkages between U.S. academics and professionals and their counterparts at universities abroad. The program is designed to award grants to qualified U.S. faculty and professionals, in select disciplines, to engage in short-term collaborative 2 to 6 week projects at higher education institutions in over 100 countries worldwide. International travel costs and an honorarium are funded by the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Participating host universities cover grantee in-country expenses or provide in-kind services. Project activities focus on the strengthening and development needs of higher education institutions and do not fund personal research. Eligible activities include teacher training, short-term lecturing, conducting seminars, special conferences or workshops, as well as collaborating on curriculum planning, institutional and/or faculty development."

Dr. Claussen's Fulbright-approved specialties are: newspaper and magazine management/economics; business, financial, and economic journalism; journalism/communication education research, issues, and trends; U.S. journalism on religion; social scientific research in mass communication and media studies; men, masculinity & mass media; U.S. mass communication history; anti-intellectualism in U.S. news media; U.S. community journalism; and U.S. alternative and minority journalism. He also has an extensive background teaching U.S. media law and regulation; mass media ethics; and reporting.

Dr. Claussen is Editor of Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, the international, refereed, quarterly journal (Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication). He assembled the first international editorial board in the journal's 60+ year history. Dr. Claussen also has designed a model business journalism curriculum for university journalism programs in Bangladesh; participated in the first World Journalism Education Congress in Singapore (June 2007); participated in a UNESCO conference on the future of African journalism education in South Africa (March 2008); presented a paper at a children and media conference at Shanghai International Studies University (October 2008); attended the 2nd European Communication Research & Education Association Conference in Barcelona (November 2008); and serves on the Editorial Board of Australian Journalism Review, also a scholarly journal. During 2009, he will attend a conference on European journalism in Budapest, Hungary, in June; and this fall he will lecture on media management/economics and consult on journalism curriculum at Instituto de Empresa (I.E.) University's School of Communication in Madrid and Segovia, Spain.