Director Peter Gross gave a keynote address at the 2013 Media Convergence conference at Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj, Romania.  Gross’ lecture was titled “Breaking out of the box: The need for a reorientation in mass communication theories.” Lecturer Melanie Faizer also attended the conference and presented a paper, “Online intercollegiate news network enables learning through teaching.”

Professor and Director Peter Gross and Karl Jakubowicz, senior adviser to the chairman of the National Broadcasting Council of Poland, co-edited the book Media transformations in the post-Communist world:  Eastern Europe’s tortured path to change, which was released this week by Lexington Press (Rowman-Littlefield).

Dr. Peter Gross was the keynote speaker at the Polish Communication Association conference in Gdansk, Poland. His presentation, “The Limits of Transformation: CEE Media and the Path to Democracy and European Integration,” took place at the conference center at the now-famous Gdansk Shipyards where Lech Walesa and the Solidarity movement was born and whose contribution to the end of communism in Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe is enshrined in history.

Peter Gross, School of Journalism and Electronic Media professor and director, has been named an Honorary Guest Professor of the Faculty of Political Science and Diplomacy at Vytautas Magnus University in Lithuania.

Peter Gross (right), director of JEM, with Romanian Ambassador to the U.S., his Excellency Adrian Vierita, on March 23, 2011 at the Romanian Embassy in Washington D.C.

Dr. Gross received one of Romania’s highest national awards, the “Order of Merit in Education,” Commander Grade.

The President of Romania confers the award, by decree, for “unusual merit in the development of education of different types, levels and forms of organization, and in research, or (for) contributing to establishing relationships between foreign educational institution and Romanian ones.”