Fulbright Student Researcher, 2018-2019

As a Fulbright Student Researcher at the University of Michigan-Flint (UM-Flint) I have had the opportunity to meet wonderful people with whom I have had an outstanding collaboration that helped me to improve my research skills. During this time I worked on three different projects as well as on my Ph.D. thesis.

One of these projects is entitled “The Impact of Central Bank Independence on Systemic Risk. Evidence from a Global Sample of Banks”, and it was presented at the monthly research seminar held at the School of Management from UM-Flint. I have received valuable feedback and significant insights from the participants as well as from my UM-Flint advisor, Dr. Yener Kandogan, which helped me to greatly improve the paper. Currently, this paper is still a work-in-progress and it will be presented at several international conferences.

The Fulbright grant helped me to establish precious connections and get in touch with U.S. scholars that will further enhance the Romanian – U.S. academic collaboration. One of them is Dr. Seyed Mehdian, Professor of Finance at UM-Flint who is currently a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași for conducting research in Finance. Also, Francine Cullari who is a Lecturer in Business Law at UM-Flint manifested great interest in future exchanging partnerships with my home university, as well as other Romanian universities, for a study of differences in Business Law practices across Romania and the U.S. Furthermore, the educational resources from UM-Flint, including international databases, textbooks, the free access to research articles and the discounts that one can benefit for econometric/statistical software through the .edu e-mail address greatly facilitated my research in the process of data gathering and analysis, and writing the literature review section.

Besides the academic life, visiting at least some remarkable U.S. places is a sine qua non for a comprehensive experience. For me, visiting the Grand Canyon, Arizona was a breath-taking experience that cannot be described in common language.

After returning back home my plans are, first of all, to defend my Ph.D. thesis, and afterwards to bring off all the projects conceived during my stay in the U.S., preferably with publication in top journals. Moreover, besides getting a job in the Finance industry, I want to remain involved in research and teaching activities at my university.

To conclude, the U.S. experience that I have had through the Fulbright Student Program is definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience, one that was worth all the effort. Even though one has to make short-term sacrifices being away from his/her home for nine months, the long-term benefits are indubitable. I kindly advise all students to apply for such an opportunity, and as a general advice, to have a driver’s license while in the U.S.

Nicu Sprincean, PhD student
Home University: Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași
Host University: University of Michigan-Flint