Fulbright-RAF Visiting Scholar, 2019-2020

 
My amazing Fulbright-RAF experience

I have always been passionate about Entrepreneurship, from early studentship. I come from a family where entrepreneurship has long been rooted. Being a serial entrepreneur myself and also currently managing the entire practice program of our Faculty of Food Science and Technology, now I am developing an innovative entrepreneurship course specific for the food industry, in order to move entrepreneurship education from the traditional process to a practice-based approach.

My experience accumulated through the Fulbright-RAF scholarship at the Ain Center for Entrepreneurship, University of Rochester supported by the Romanian American Foundation was amazing and brilliantly inspirational. I am a very active person so I attended over the four months journey to hundreds of available events ranging from Technology Transfer courses and Workshops for soft skill development for students in campus to Business Networking events and Pitch contest in campus, cafes and incubators. I learned valuable lessons from the management team about how the Ain Center of Entrepreneurship was designed, how is structured and works, lessons that will help our university skip a few years in development. I'm still amazed by how much can be accomplished and how effective people can be if they work together in teams for the greater institutional good, to be ever better.

Besides the Rochester Ecosystem I visited, along with my fellow Fulbrighters, other Entrepreneurship Centers from known universities all over America, like Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Cornell University, Babson College, University of Minnesota, and these are just a few on a long list. I observed and learned a lot from their unique strategies and specifics for business courses and all made me understand what makes America a breeding ground for entrepreneurs.

The Fulbright program also provided frequent social events posted on our platform to learn about American history, culture and food, all over New York state, so of course I benefited from them. We had also time to visit cities and symbols that USA is known for, and they did not disappoint.

The Fulbright RAF experience at the Ain Center for Entrepreneurship, University of Rochester gave me an excellent opportunity to shift my perspective and find new ways of teaching. Basically my degree of understanding of the development and potential of the entrepreneurial ecosystem has been greatly upgraded to a bigger overall picture.

Now my main focus in the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Cluj-Napoca on short and medium term is to develop an Entrepreneurship center in the university, help develop support structures, programs and courses for students, researchers and alumni to help foster the entrepreneurship mindset and innovative activity of our own ecosystem. I look forward to the road ahead, having now more skills and a new perspective to help me.