Tudor Vlad named director of the Cox Center
Tudor Vlad has been named the director of the James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication Training and Research. Vlad, who has served as the center’s associate director since 2008, assumed his director responsibilities when Lee Becker retired June 30, 2017.
“Tudor is imminently qualified to continue the great work fostered by the Cox International Center in the years ahead,” said Charles Davis, dean of Grady College where the Cox Center is based. “I’m indebted to Tudor for his willingness to jump right in and help me with several international initiatives emerging.”
Vlad has a doctorate from the Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Bucharest. He came to the Cox Center as a Fulbright senior scholar. Prior to moving to Georgia, Vlad was a member of the faculty of the Department of Journalism at the Babes-Bolyai University, which he founded and chaired. He is a director of the World Free Press Institute and is the author of two non-fiction books, four novels and numerous studies, scholarly materials and articles published in the United States and in Europe.
Vlad is excited about the future of the Cox Center. “What I want to do is to use the international expertise of Grady faculty who focus on communication, and partner with other UGA units, such as the Carl Vinson Institute of Government and SPIA. This multidisciplinary approach will be beneficial to the international visibility of the University of Georgia.”
Vlad has been involved in more than 53 U.S. led international programs in 23 countries that foster democracy and stability in emerging democracies by promoting freedom of speech, independent media and inter-ethnic dialog. He has conducted training programs for journalists and journalism educators in Belarus, Hungary, Kenya, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, and Ukraine, among others.
Vlad has been recognized by numerous organizations for his work including, most recently, the Intellectual Dialogue and Educational Advancement Society for his “valuable efforts towards continuously fostering democracy and stability globally.”
The Cox Center was created in 1985, and in 1990 was named for the late James M. Cox Jr., chairman of the board of Cox Enterprises. Each year, the center conducts multiple media workshops for journalists from around the world, publishes technical reports and directs research on a variety of topics related to the practice of journalism around the world. To date, more than 142 training programs have been offered involving journalists from all over the world. The Cox Center has also been the proud host of the Edward R. Murrow Program for Journalists the past eight years.
Date: July 3, 2017Author: Sarah Freeman, freemans@uga.edu
Contact: Sarah Freeman, freemans@uga.edu
