Hellenic American University is pleased to announce a Call for Papers for the 4th International Europe in Discourse Conference, which will be held on September 26-28, 2024.

As in its three successful predecessors in 2018, 2020, and 2022, the year’s conference will explore discourses of Europe through its history, culture, geography and values. It aims to serve as an international, interdisciplinary platform to discuss how Europe is understood and shaped through a plethora of aspects that can be theoretically approached and empirically identified.

EID IV also remains faithful to the conviction that there should be a dialogue between those who talk about Europe and analyze it and those who “do” Europe and shape it. The Conference is therefore an open call to political analysts, communication experts, diplomacy and security experts, public leaders, historians, economists and policymakers from a variety of fields to engage with the Conference themes and submit a contribution along the formats accepted.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers

Michał Krzyżanowski
Professor and Director of Research at the Center for Multidisciplinary Studies on Racism
Chair in Media and Communication Studies
Uppsala University

Federico Romero
Visting Fellow
Department of History and Civilization - European University Institute

Vivien A. Schmidt
Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration
Professor of International Relations, Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies
Professor of Political Science
Boston University

Ruth Wodak
Distinguished Professor and Chair in Discourse Studies
Lancaster University/University Vienna

For more details, consult the Conference website and the Call for Papers.

Image: Ludon-Medoc, France. Ludon Vinery, photo: ©Arthur Pequin.

The Summer 2023 issue of Connect is now being emailed to University alumni and can be downloaded here. In this issue, we highlight several signature events that took place this past semester, with a focus on prominent alumni who returned to our Athens campus to share their expertise with our community.

President Leonidas Phoebus Koskos provides an update on our accreditor’s decision to accept the University’s Interim Fifth-Year Report and the steps we are taking to bring the Nashua and Athens communities even closer together.

This issue’s Alumni Success Story features Christian Moraitis (BSI ’23), who is now living in the Netherlands and working for a large IT firm. Christian shares his experience with the BSI program and how it has shaped his successful career. Our Faculty Spotlight features Panagiote (Pete) Tsolis, the Director of our Business Programs.

Finally, as always, we share recent news of our faculty and fellow alumni’s accomplishments – from new publications and conference talks to career advancements.

Hellenic American University was pleased to co-organize and host the 22nd consecutive year of the Olympia Summer Academy July 11-14 at its campus in Athens. A total of 57 undergraduate and graduate students from 10 countries took part in the Academy’s series of specialized courses in politics and international studies. This year’s program comprised three cycles of 4-day intensive workshops: Global Discord and Cooperation, Terrorism and Counterterrorism, and The Rise of China: Domestic and Global Perspectives. The courses were taught by an international, 11-member faculty of prominent scholars and practitioners.

Joining the University in co-organizing this year's Academy were the European International Studies Association, the Institute of International Relations, and the Navarino Network. The summer program was made possible thanks tthe generous support of the A.G. Leventis Foundation, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (Greece and Cyprus) and the Hanns Seidel Foundation Greece.

Image: Faculty & students of the 22nd Summer Olympia Academy

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Hellenic American University and the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America have announced the formation of a partnership to facilitate educational opportunities in the U.S. and Greece. The scope of this cooperative initiative, as outlined in a Memorandum of Understanding that was signed on March 22, 2023, includes the development of opportunities for study abroad, civic engagement, and faculty and student exchange.

In a recent letter sent to 500 parishes across the US, the Archdiocese noted that the study-abroad options include both semester- or term-study and faculty-led programs on aspects of Greek culture, religion, and heritage. As University Executive Vice-President and CFO Dr. Leonidas Tzonis points out, the latter could take the form of small parish-based groups of college students, who would travel to the University’s Athens campus at Hellenic American College for a series of custom-designed credit-bearing courses. The University is also planning to offer the option of summer Advanced Placement courses for high-school seniors.

As an early step in establishing the partnership, the University’s Director of Business Programs and assistant professor Pete Tsolis delivered a workshop for high school and college students in the 46th annual Faith Dance Fellowship Festival, which was held in Phoenix, Arizona this past February. During the festival, His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros announced the offer of ten scholarships to members of the Greek American community for study in Athens.

Image at the top: Pete Tsolis, Director of Business Programs with students at the FDF Festival.

Inside image: His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros and University Executive Vice President and CFO Dr. Leonidas Tzonis.

Edla Priyadharshini (MBA ’23) is one of five MBA students doing a practicum this summer in the framework of the Curricular Practical Training (CPT) program. Edla is working under TechAlpha LLC for Delta Airlines.

The CPT is a formal internship, cooperative education, or other type of required placement or practicum that sponsoring employers offer through a cooperative agreement with the student’s university. The practicum is a component for students in the STEM-focused MBA program with a specialization in Management Information Systems.

Edla reports that her particular CPT is focused on learning new technologies and interacting with the senior development team of business analysts, SCRUM masters, and application developers. She says she see direct connections between what she studied in her degree program and her practicum: “The CPT has helped me gain real-time experience of concepts and technologies I’ve been learning during my MBA program. I’ve found the courses I took in Functional Skills Integration, HR Management and Strategy, and IT Management and Strategy very helpful in my practicum now.” In turn, she adds, “my experience now will help in my upcoming course on Systems Analysis and Design and certainly for my capstone project.”

Hellenic American University is pleased to be co-organizing and hosting the 22nd biennial conference of the International Lawrence Durrell Society (ILDS) On Miracle Ground XXII on July 4 – 6, 2024 at its campus in Athens.

• Download the conference poster (.png, 7.73 MB)
• View the Call for Papers (.pdf, 223.0 KB)

Keynote speaker for this year’s conference is Dr. Marinos Pourgouris, Associate Professor of Literary Theory and Modern Greek Studies at the University of Cyprus. The conference theme, as noted in the Call for Papers published on the ILDS website, is “Dark” Durrell. While the conference organizers welcome papers on any aspect of Durrell’s writing and that of his contemporaries or milieu, they particularly encourage consideration of the theme of darkness.

Founded in 1980, the ILDS is a non-profit organization that promotes the study, understanding, and appreciation of the works of Lawrence Durrell through scholarly conferences and publications, among which a critical bibliography and the journal Deus Loci. The annual Durrell research panels, as well as the biennial international conference, attract a great number of Durrell scholars. The biennial conferences in particular remain a high point in the Society’s program of events and activities and have been held at institutions such as the Paris Nanterre University, the University of Crete, and the University of Toulouse.

Bringing the 2024 conference to Hellenic American University’s Athens campus was an idea of ILDS board member and recipient of the William Godshalk Prize for new Durrell scholarship, Dr. Athanasios Dimakis, who is also an adjunct faculty member in the University’s B.A. in English Language and Literature (BAELL) program. After sharing his idea with the director of the BAELL program, Dr. Vassiliki Kourbani, and securing her enthusiastic support, Dr. Dimakis presented his proposal at a meeting of the executive board of the Durrell Society in Louisville, Kentucky, where it was unanimously accepted.

Dr. Dimakis describes the hosting of the conference at the University’s campus as a kind of “homecoming” for this international society of scholars and academics. In his words, “the centrality of the Hellenic world in Durrell’s oeuvre and his prominence in the Anglophone literary canon on Hellenism unite the intellectual endeavors and the noble spirit of both institutions.”

Image: Part of the Conference Poster

MBA student Sri Subhakar Ganapuram has been accepted to the summer 2023 Iacocca Global Village program at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Sri joins fellow students and young professionals from around the globe in an intensive 5-week residency program of workshops, design challenges and service-learning projects that is designed to develop participants’ interdisciplinary teamwork and entrepreneurship skills. Several workshops combine classroom instruction with field outings to nearby places of historical or cultural interest.

Roughly 65-75 candidates from 35-45 countries are accepted to the Global Village program each year. In selecting candidates for admission, the Institute looks for individuals who combine academic excellence with a record of professional accomplishments and leadership experience.

Sri says of his experience: “The Iacocca Global Village Program is renowned for emphasizing experiential learning and cultural immersion. It gave me the chance to broaden my perspective on the world, improve my intercultural competence, and comprehend global challenges better.”

Before joining Hellenic American University in 2021, Sri worked for Lucent E-Commerce as a senior product development manager. Now in his final semester of his MBA program, Sri has been a highly engaged member of the student community and serves as both vice-president of the Hellenic American University Entrepreneurship Club and vice-president of the Student Body Council for the Nashua campus.

Hellenic American University’s 13th commencement was held on June 29, 2023, at the Athens Concert Hall (Dimitris Mitropoulos Hall). Friends, family, and distinguished guests joined faculty, staff, executive officers, and trustees of Hellenic American University to celebrate the 74 members of the graduating Class of 2023.

Valedictory addresses were given by Angeliki Georgaki, (M.A. in Applied Linguistics-TESOL) and Sofia Votsiou (B.S. in Psychology). The salutatorians for the Class of 2023 were Jeffrey Scott Basile (MBA), and Despoina Simitsoglou (B.S. in Psychology).

As in past commencements, the University conferred honorary degrees to individuals who have distinguished themselves through achievements in the arts or sciences, education, public service, or philanthropy. This year the University awarded two honorary doctorates: one to Eleftherios Skiadas, a journalist and historian with a long record of public service, including his current tenure as vice mayor and President of the Cultural Foundation of the City of Athens; the other to Dr. Eric Smaw, a philosopher, educator, and civil rights advocate who serves on the national board of the American Civil Liberties Union. Dr. Smaw is Professor and Department Chair of Philosophy at Rollins College, where he also serves as Special Assistant to the Provost for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging.

In his commencement address, President Leonidas Phoebus Koskos pointed out that the new graduates were entering their professional life in a world that is rapidly being changed by the astonishing advances in artificial intelligence and new work environments. He encouraged them to draw upon the critical thinking and innovative mindset their education has equipped them with to meet the challenges in a creative and productive way and called upon them to embrace their role as global citizens and contribute to the development of their communities.

After the close of the ceremony, a reception followed where graduates celebrated this milestone with their professors, loved ones, and friends.

Congratulations to all our graduates!

Image: Hellenic American University – Graduating Class of 2023

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Christian Moraitis, a student in the B.S. in Informatics program, has won the “Best Paper Award” for the research he conducted for his capstone project and which he presented at this year’s Hellenic American University Student Research Conference on May 13, 2023. During his presentation, the undergraduate Informatics student discussed his work in developing a tool that could eventually enable deaf and hard-of-hearing persons to use their native language to communicate online with English-language speakers who do not know ASL.

In his research, Christian used machine learning and AI-enabled object detection to create a tool that would read hand gestures in real-time, predict the corresponding American Sign Language (ASL) signs, and then compile them into a sentence. The translated caption text could then be converted into speech.

Given the constraints of time and resources, he focused on having the object detection algorithm predict the letters of the American Sign Language (ASL) alphabet. The algorithm was trained on a dataset of over 3,000 photos of signed (gestured) letters that he created himself.

The conference organizer and Director of the Research Institute, Dr. Panagiotis Kalozoumis, called the project a remarkable outcome, noting that “Christian adeptly applied the knowledge acquired from the program and combined it with his exceptional creativity.” Dr. Kalozoumis, who is also Assistant Professor and Director of Informatics Programs, added that the young software engineer’s work aptly “reflects his hard work and dedication and the rigorous standards of the BSI program.”

The idea for the project came to Christian during the COVID lockdown and the boom in videoconferencing and virtual meetings collaboration that the containment measures triggered. Christian says that while the digital platforms provided a way to keep collaborating and communicating during the quarantine for many, that was less true for deaf and hard-of-hearing persons.

Even though the project was a prototype that detected and identified letters as they were being signed, the technology, given sufficient resources, could eventually be scaled to identify and predict signs as well. Still, Christian found the project very satisfying. He says that the capstone was an ideal opportunity to pursue an idea that had been on his mind since the lockdown. “I wanted to use it to do something I couldn’t otherwise do and at the same time to learn new things and to make something of value.”

This process of taking an idea from conception to implementation is one of the things that attracted him to the field in the first place. “I was always opening up my toys when I was a kid to see how they worked. And then in high school, playing video games, I would wind up thinking, how did they put this together? I think that really sparked my interest in IT and especially development.”

As a high school student, he knew what he wanted to study and where. Initially he was hoping to study in the US—his mother is from New Jersey—but that wasn’t possible financially. His next steps, he said, was to look at American university programs in Greece. “Hellenic American University seemed to be a good fit for what I wanted to do. And it has been. I’ve fully enjoyed being a student here.”

Christian graduated this June. He managed not only to finish his B.S. in Informatics in just under four years, but to do so while working a series of jobs, including a stint as factory worker and a position managing a surfing and watersport center in Rhodes and later as a software engineer for Infralabs Ltd. He’s now working in the Netherlands as a full stack developer for a firm called Pluxbox, where he creates software tools for the company’s platform.

The capstone project he did at Hellenic American University, however, left its trace in his plans for the near future. He hopes to pursue graduate studies in machine learning and computer vision.

Image: Dr. Panayotis Kalozoumis, Christian Moraitis (BSI ’23), and Dr. Themis Kaniklidou.

Hellenic American University was honored to welcome the prominent educator and civil rights advocate Dr. Smaw to the Athens campus where he led a workshop on May 22nd for administrative and teaching personnel on strategic planning for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEIB). Staff and faculty at the Nashua campus joined online.

During the session, Dr. Smaw, a philosophy professor at Rollins College and Special Assistant to its Provost for DEIB, explored with participants the steps of creating a DEIB plan. Using a set of interactive tasks, he guided participants through the process of building the planning team, securing the resources to implement it, and setting the metrics to evaluate its success. He stressed the importance of starting out by setting the key goals of the plan—its “North Star”, as he called it. He pointed out that these goals can be a mix of more ambitious objectives that will take time to implement and shorter-term ones that we can realize relatively fast and with limited resources. This way, he said, stakeholders can see that we’re making tangible progress from the start.

Dr. Smaw highlighted the need from the very beginning of the planning process to secure the broadest possible input from the community. For the University, this will also mean ensuring that the composition of the planning team reflects the spectrum of the institution’s stakeholders and the diversity of the student body. As the University’s Director of Institutional Research and Assessment Stephen Bacigal points out, “this was the model we have used in other major planning and evaluation projects, such as the Strategic Enrollment Plan. And it’s become more important with an increasingly international study body.”

University provost Dr. Themis Kaniklidou was pleased with the engagement that participants showed during the workshop. She noted, “I am optimistic that the DEI workshop led by Dr. Smaw will help us carry out our agenda for faculty and staff development and together to make the University a more equitable, diverse, and welcoming place. We were also reminded that taking action is important but not sufficient on its own: we need to communicate the changes we’re making and to measure our effectiveness—and, of course, change things if needed.”

The workshop was one of several outreach events that Dr. Smaw delivered during his stay in Athens (May 23 – June 2, 2023) and which included training sessions for the University’s newly formed Debating Club and a demonstration class on neurobiology and crime entitled “Zombies are real”.

Image: Dr. Smaw, Professor and Department Chair of Philosophy at Rollins College, Special Assistant to the Provost for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging.