Long-term Student-Professor Collaboration

Long-term Student-Professor Collaboration

Current Fulbright scholar Dr. Michael S. Jones (Associate Professor of Philosophy and Theology, Liberty University; Visiting Professor of Philosophy, University of Bucharest) first met Iulian Stoian in 1998, when young Mr. Stoian was a freshman theology student in Bucharest. When Jones returned to Romania in 1999 to conduct preliminary research on the Romanian philosopher Lucian Blaga, Stoian volunteered to accompany him to libraries and universities and serve as his translator. He again aided Jones when the latter moved to Cluj in 2002 to research and write a PhD dissertation on Blaga. Now Stoian is the pastor of a church in Tandarei, Romania. Thanks to his second Fulbright, which has Jones living and teaching in Bucharest, Jones is returning those favors, travelling to Tandarei every other month to speak in Pastor Stoian’s church on the philosophical foundations of Christian Theology. Laura Jones, Professor Jones’ wife, who is an EdD student at Liberty University and is spending the year with her husband in Bucharest, is also traveling to Tandarei, where she has been teaching classes on effective education of children in the church.