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WIU-QC Management Professor Selected for Fulbright Award

September 2, 2008

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MOLINE, IL -- Western Illinois University-Quad Cities Management Professor Emeric Solymossy (Shoi - moshi) has been selected as the 2008-2009 Fulbright-Kathryn and Craig Hall Distinguished Chair for Entrepreneurship in Central Europe.

According to the United States Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, Solymossy will be teaching graduate and undergraduate courses in entrepreneurship and helping develop entrepreneurship curriculum at Corvinus University in Budapest, Hungary. The Fulbright-Hall Distinguished Chair is awarded annually to one U.S. scholar and entrepreneurship expert. Selection is competitive, based on academic and/or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in the field. Solymossy is the first Western faculty member to be selected as a Fulbright-Hall Distinguished Chair.

The Fulbright-Hall award is supplemented with a stipend provided by the Kathryn and Craig Hall Foundation (Dallas, TX). Craig Hall is chair of Hall Financial Group (Dallas, TX) and the husband of Kathryn Walt Hall, the U.S. Ambassador to Austria from 1997-2001. Mr. Hall also was a member of the Austrian-American Educational Commission (AAEC) board.

"I am humbled, recognizing it as an extremely high honor. At the same time, I am quite proud of the professional accomplishment it highlights," Solymossy said. "I'm excited about the international recognition it brings, and I am thrilled to be building a bridge between my home and my homeland, since I will be establishing institutional linkages between WIU and Corvinus University, one of the truly outstanding universities in Europe."

Solymossy joined the WIU management faculty in 1998. During the Spring 2008 semester he served as a visiting professor at Linköping University, Sweden, as well as a professor-in-residence at the University of Texas. In addition to teaching in Sweden, Solymossy has served as a visiting professor in Austria, Argentina, Hungary, Kosovo, Mexico and Russia. At the WIU-QC campus, he teaches courses in entrepreneurship and small business management and e-commerce, as well as courses in ethics, international business, leadership, international management, policy and strategy and research methods.

He is an active member of numerous professional and academic associations, including the Academy of Management, the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship, the Academy of International Business, the International Council for Small Business, Beta Gamma Sigma and the Illinois Quad Cities Chamber of Commerce. Solymossy also serves on the editorial board for the International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal and is an editorial reviewer for four management journals and five book publishers.

"I was extremely pleased to learn that Dr. Solymossy has been awarded a Fulbright fellowship," noted College of Business and Technology Dean Tom Erekson. "This is a prestigious award and is a testament to Dr. Solymossy's experience and capabilities. It is an honor for WIU to have faculty who receive such awards."

The Fulbright-Hall Distinguished Chair for Entrepreneurship in Central Europe is designed to address a broad spectrum of principle and regional issues related to entrepreneurship, including the relationships between public, private and non-profit sectors; entrepreneurial strategies; the role of governments in facilitating individual initiatives; economic and social entrepreneurship; and the theory of free market economies and economies in the process of transition or transformation to more mature market economies. The distinguished chair award is a regional grant that includes a partnership between the U.S., AAEC and Fulbright commissions in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and the Slovak Republic.

Established in 1946 under legislation introduced by the late Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the Fulbright program's purpose is to build mutual understanding between the people of
the United States and the rest of the world. The Fulbright Program, America's flagship international educational exchange program, is sponsored by the United States Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Since its inception, the Fulbright Program has exchanged approximately 273,500 people – 102,900 Americans who have studied, taught or researched abroad and 170,600 students, scholars and teachers from other countries who have engaged in similar activities in the United States.

For more information about the Fulbright Program or the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, visit exchanges.state.gov.





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