Dr. Simona Stan is now an associate professor of marketing
and management at the University of Montana's School
of Business Administration. She was profiled today in an
online article in the Montana Kaimin.
Dr. Stan grew up in Sibiu, Romania, earning an undergraduate
degree in mechanical engineering at the Lucian Blaga
University in 1988.
Then the revolution happened.
"It was three days of chaos," Dr. Stan recalls. "There
were shootings all over the place. It was crazy."
Afterward, while she was employed teaching engineering
at a local university, some people from the University
of Missouri arrived in Romania to offer guidance on the
transition from communism to a free market economy.
They spotted young professors who were eager to learn
about business, and Stan had the chance to take a ten
week seminar which exposed her to marketing.
It was "like something where you finally open your
mind and see the world in a whole different way," Stan
remembers.
She accepted an invitation to study at the University
of Missouri, then stayed on to pursue her doctorate
in marketing.
From Missouri she moved to a teaching position at the
University of Oregon, and then to her present post at
the University of Montana.
Last summer Stan took her students to Romania for a
two-week "study abroad" at the University of Sibiu, and
she will take another student group this summer.
The students from Montana divided their time between university
classes and a personalized internship with a local
company in Sibiu, which Professor Stan was able to
arrange through her personal connections with the
firms in her hometown.
Some of the students' comments about their multicultural
management experience are posted on UM's website,
with details about the costs, credits, daily schedule and
enrollment deadlines for the upcoming summer 2015
study abroad in Romania (June 28 - July 12).
"I am still on cloud nine over the international
experience in Romania! ... We did so much
within our limited time frame, I truly feel like
not a single moment was wasted."
Based upon the enthusiasm of last summer's student
participants, it appears that the relationship between Dr.
Stan's alma mater in Sibiu and the University of
Montana's business school will become an enduring one.
ALLAN CRUSE
19 MAR 2015