Dan Marek
CEP East-East Scholar
Dan Marek represents the next generation of Central and East European scholars that CEP is helping to develop and encourage. During CEP's first year at the European Studies Department at Palacky University in the Czech Republic, Dan attended all the courses offered by CEP lecturers. CEP lecturer Troy McGrath was instrumental in helping Dan apply to the M.A. program in Politics at Hull University in England. Dan attributes his success in the M.A. program to "the prior opportunity to interact with CEP lecturers to gain the teaching, research, and language skills and experience that I otherwise would not have been able to get." After his post-graduate work, Dan was able to secure a junior lectureship at his old department and an opportunity to enter its Ph.D. program in European Integration, which CEP lecturer Stephen Baskerville has played a major role in developing. After it was discovered that the university lacked the funds to pay Dan's salary, CEP offered to pay his salary, to provide reading materials for his students and to integrate him into CEP's activities as our first "Eastern scholar" -- a program of local faculty development that CEP will expand in the coming year. In Dan's words, "CEP has greatly facilitated my work and has enabled me to teach Western-style courses that otherwise would not have been offered."

Dan, Liz and Elizabeth Bruch
Family of CEP Lecturers
When Elizabeth Bruch, a human rights lawyer from Minneapolis, first applied to CEP in the winter of 1993, she discussed her plans with her parents Dan and Liz Bruch -- not unusual for a close-knit family. What happened next, however, was unusual: Dan and Liz decided to apply to CEP as well. All three are now in their second year of service in Central Europe. Elizabeth, after a year teaching human rights law in Bucharest, switched to Bratislava, where she now teaches the same subject to aspiring Slovak diplomats at the Institute of International Relations at Comenius University. Dan Bruch, a sociologist (and Lutheran minister), teaches in the Sociology Department at Szeged University in Hungary and is helping restructure the university's sociology curriculum. Liz Bruch, an adult educator and college dean, is teaching and advising in the Education Department at Szeged. To make it even more of a family affair, younger daughter Leah joined Dan and Liz for the 1993-94 academic year.

Nandini Ramanujam
Economics Lecturer, Lithuania
A native of India, Nandini holds a doctorate in economics from Oxford University. She spent a year as a student at the Pushkin Institute in Moscow and worked as a research associate for the Indian Council for Research. In her second year with CEP, Nandini teaches intermediate micro-economics and macro-economics at the Lithuanian Agricultural Academy in Kaunas. Apart from her teaching responsibilities, she has been involved in a number of activities which have had a substantial impact on her university. She has taken the lead in introducing changes in the economics curriculum. Nandini also helped in securing and co-administering a $68,000 Higher Educational Support Program grant to purchase new books and computers in support of the new curriculum. In addition, she recently persuaded the Rank Xerox Company to donate and ship a new photocopier to her department.