Education paper by Clark, Sylvia Csűrös, Judit Hajnal Ward, Molly Stewart
St. John's University, Rutgers University

Eyewitness to History: Follow up on the Hungarian Scholar Program at Rutgers University

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Following up on their 2012 AHEA paper, the authors present their findings about the professional and personal history of a small group of Hungarian scholars and graduate students. All were selected to participate in an intensive language immersion program at Rutgers University upon the initiation of the National Academy of Sciences in January 1957. With the help of online and library resources, most of the refugee scientists have been located in the past year. Fascinating life stories unfolded from the pieces of the puzzle, drawn from official biographies, traditional archives, social media applications, or the personal memories of the handful survivors contacted. Setting a great example to new immigrants, these Hungarian refugees contributed greatly to science and culture in their new homeland. Chronicling their history utilized some best practices of information science in a multicultural setting, and will be of interest to broad audiences from a methodological perspective too.


Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Sylvia Csuros Clark is an Associate Professor of Marketing at St. John's Unversity's Tobin College of Business on Staten Island. She holds a Ph.D. in Consumer Behavior from CUNY, an M.B.A. in Quantitative Analysis from New York University, and a B.B.A. summa cum laude from Baruch College. She is also an alumna of the Hungarian Studies program at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, having fulfilled the requirements for a Hungarian minor and earned a certificate in Hungarian language. She passed the Hungarian State Proficiency Examination Advanced Level, certifying native proficiency of the educated speaker. Dr. Clark has taught a menu of courses in marketing over a thirty-year span, primarily at the upper-level undergraduate and master's levels. Her research interests cover such diverse areas as cognitive age, travel marketing, fashion marketing, teaching/learning style constructs, and aspects of Hungarian culture.

Judit Hajnal Ward is an information professional at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. She holds a doctoral degree in linguistics from the University of Debrecen, Hungary, and a Master’s in Library and Information Science from Rutgers. Her areas of specialization include library and information science. digital libraries, medical communication and informatics. She taught courses in linguistics, foreign languages and medical communication at the University of Debrecen before joining Rutgers as visiting professor of Hungarian Studies. Her research interests include human information behavior, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary research methods, evaluation of information in the electronic environment, and Hungarian Studies in the United States. Currently she is the Director of Information Services of the Center of Alcohol Studies and Adjunct Faculty at the School of Communication and Information. She is also the North American Director of the European Consortium for the Certificate of Attainment in Modern Languages.

Molly Stewart is a part time reference librarian at the Center of Alcohol Studies Library, Rutgers University. Additionally, she works part time as an adult services librarian at Bridgewater Public Library. Prior to completing her MLIS at Rutgers University, she received a BA in Sociology from Douglass College, Rutgers University. During her time at CASL she has participated in several research projects and conference presentations including a longitudinal bibliometric study, profiling researchers, and creating user centered library applications for scholarly research.