Where in the World are FIU's Fulbrighters?

Fulbright Student, Susana Fuertes: Bahrain

Susana Fuertes earned a Fulbright Student scholarship to study and research women entrepreneurship in Bahrain in 2023-2024. A small business owner herself, Fuertes runs an online floral boutique and has a special interest in helping women grow independent enterprises, which is the focus of her work. She immersed herself in the local community and took every opportunity to connect with business leaders, for example during The Sixth Gulf Business Incubators and Accelerators Conference in November 2023. 

Since her work was far from done, Fulbright invited her to extend her scholarship for another year. After a short visit home to Miami in the summer, she is now back in Bahrain for 2024-2025 to continue her research and also launch a new podcast called Forwardpreneurs.

Fulbright Global Scholar Angela Salmon: Colombia, Greece and Poland

Pursuing research and teaching in one country abroad is certainly an ambitious mission. But three? That’s what FIU’s Fulbright Global Scholars set out to do.

Angela Salmon, associate professor in the department of teaching and learning, has conducted collaborative international research for years. Her Fulbright Global Scholar Award now enables her to dedicate even more time to expanding her research project, "Digital Storytelling to Empower Vulnerable Children and Parents Cope with Complex Challenges." She just completed her stay in Colombia at Universidad de La Sabana and Aeiotu in Bogotá, which will be followed by visits to Poland at the University of Warsaw and in Greece at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens between 2024-2026.

Salmon is the founding leader of Visible Thinking South Florida, a non-profit learning community that empowers teachers to implement cutting-edge pedagogies, and a fellow of the Harvard Project Zero Reimagining Migration. Her Fulbright comparative participatory action research project will build a multiregional partnership to investigate sustainable solutions to alleviate the migration crisis. It aims to empower young immigrant-origin children and parents through intergenerational project, "Digital Collective Storytelling for Voice and Influence." It fosters cultural identities, a sense of belonging and agency. It explores how this pedagogy bridges generational, cultural and communication gaps to support children's well-being. Quantitative and qualitative data and harnessing international cooperation will inform practitioners and policymakers about pedagogies that foster healthy communities.

Fulbright Global Scholar Allison Matulli: Colombia, Trinidad & Tobago and Italy

Allison Matulli is an adjunct faculty member in the department of criminology and criminal justice, an attorney and certified Montessori lead educator. Her Fulbright project, "Speech Rights and Empowering Ethnically Diverse Youth To Know Their Rights In One World, Your Voice," expands research she has already published in her book "Your Freedom, Your Power: A Kid's Guide to the First Amendment.”

Matulli began her Fulbright Global Scholar journey in 2023 and completed the first leg of her project at Universidad del Norte in Barranquilla, Colombia. There, she closely collaborated with María González Malabet, director of the Institute of Political and Institutional Development, delivered guest lectures, gave radio interviews, conducted focus groups with youth leaders and much more. Matulli ’s findings confirm the need to help youth comprehend civic engagement and speech rights, especially as they seek to exercise their singular voices on public and private college campuses. Between her Fulbright trips, she will launch her Your Freedom, Your Power School Book Tour 2024-25 to actively engage K-12 students on their First Amendment rights.

Matulli will head in October to Trinidad & Tobago to be hosted by the United Way TT’s CEO Gail Sooknarine. She will spend the final leg of her project at the University of Palermo in Italy in Spring 2025.

Fulbright Specialist Emmanuel Roussakis: Colombia

That’s a wrap – or is it? The upcoming Fulbright Specialist project at Uni-Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia, this fall will be Emmanuel Roussakis’s final Fulbright stint – so he says. All while holding the title of professor emeritus of finance, the now-88-year-old has served as a Fulbright Scholar to Romania (2010) and a Fulbright Specialist to Russia (2012), Indonesia (2013), Morocco (2014), Kuwait (2017), Tunisia (2020) and Cyprus (2022). Uni-Norte invited him to offer lectures to undergraduate students on international financial management, to graduate and postgraduate students on global banking and to faculty on case-study writing techniques, in addition to sharing his teaching expertise with members of the academic community.

Fulbright Specialist Rob Guerette: India

Rob Guerette, professor in the department of criminology and criminal justice, is invited by Maharashtra National Law University, in Nagpur, India, to assist with developing an applied criminology program that will be deployed fully online to Indian police officers this fall semester. Additionally, he will be giving a series of graduate level seminars on various crime science topics.

This is Guerette’s second Fulbright Specialist award. In 2021, he visited the University of Akureyri and the National Police Commissioner of Iceland’s Center for Police Training and Professional Development, a government entity that works with the university, to help facilitate the university’s continuing education curriculum and training on cybercrime recognition and prevention.