Menty Bayleyen Receives Fulbright International Education Administrators Award

Philadelphia — Menty Bayleyen, Senior Associate Director of Admissions at Penn Dental Medicine, has been selected as a recipient of a Fulbright International Education Administrators (IEA) Award. Bayleyen is one of just 14 individuals nationwide chosen for this highly selective award. Building on the school’s international relationships, she will be participating in the IEA program in Taiwan during March 2024.

The fully funded Fulbright IEA program provides opportunities for U.S. higher education administrators to participate in intensive two-week seminars abroad to learn about other countries’ higher education systems. According to Fulbright, the program is designed to give participants the opportunity to build their institution’s capacity for international education, gain a cross-cultural perspective, and open doors to collaboration with colleagues and students throughout the world.

“Participating in a Fulbright Scholar program has been a long-desired professional goal of mine, and I am honored to be selected for the Fulbright IEA Scholar Award,” says Bayleyen. “Being a passionate believer in Fulbright’s values of advancing intercultural understanding through international exchange programs, cultural immersion, and free inquiry, I am looking forward to learning from the experience and implementing the newly acquired knowledge upon my return.”

The program will include campus visits to a wide range of universities and colleges, briefings from faculty and administration at public and private higher education institutions as well as from leading educational experts and government officials, and tours of historical and cultural sites.

Bayleyen, who co-directs the school’s international student exchange program, notes that the visit to Taiwan will also provide an opportunity to reinforce the relationships the school has with five universities there, each of which has a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Penn Dental Medicine for student and faculty exchange.

“We have robust exchange programs with all of our MOU schools in Taiwan. Gaining a holistic understanding of the Taiwanese higher education system will enable us to build a sustainable and a reciprocal exchange program with our partner institutions,” says Bayleyen. “With Penn Dental Medicine’s desire to play a larger global role in the international academic, health, and research arenas, there is a growing interest of faculty and students to seek educational experiences in international destinations. International exposure gives our students a cultural context to the way academic and healthcare systems are administered overseas. I am confident that the Fulbright seminar will be instrumental in assisting us in developing this unique aspect of our school.”

“We are so proud to have Menty representing Penn Dental Medicine through this Fulbright award,” says Penn Dental Medicine’s Morton Amsterdam Dean, Dr. Mark S. Wolff. “Her selection is a reflection of her leadership and contributions within higher education.”