Fulbright Program taps education professor to assist Greek university

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UL Lafayette’s Dr. Robert Slater will spend almost three weeks helping a university in Greece comply with European Union higher education standards.

Slater directs the University’s Department of Educational Foundations and Leadership and is a SLEMCO/BORSF Endowed Professor of Education.

Later this month, he will join researchers at the Athens University of Economics and Business to assess that university’s Quality Assurance Program. 

The work is part of a larger, ongoing push by the European Union to refine higher education standards. The EU was established in 1993 to provide political and economic benefits for its 28 member nations.

The EU is creating guidelines to be followed by all European universities. They are necessary, as one example, to create a process by which college credits earned by students in one country could be transferred to a university in another country, Slater said.

“There’s been an effort by the European Union to standardize higher education across Europe, or at least make it somewhat compatible. The goal is to create a higher education system that is conducive to students moving around,” he explained.

Slater will travel to Greece as a Fulbright specialist. His trip is being funded by the Fulbright Program, an international educational exchange founded in 1946. The program is sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Fulbright alumni include 57 Nobel Laureates, 82 Pulitzer Prize winners, 70 MacArthur Fellows and16 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients.

This is Slater's third Fulbright assignment. He spent a semester in Peru in 1996 and a semester in Bolivia in 2010 as part of the program.

Learn more about the program: https://fulbrightspecialist.worldlearning.org/