Dr. Philip J. Auter attended two conferences in August in Washington, D.C. -- the Synergy Conference, sponsored by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Higher Education Development (HED), and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) national conference.

Auter and his grant co-directors, Prof. Ashraf Galal Bayoumy of Qatar University, and Prof. Mohamed Arafa, president of Global Media Consultants (LLC), were invited to attend the Synergy Conference, which was designed to bring alumni of USAID grants together with new recipients to help them develop successful strategies for grant execution. Auter, Bayoumy and Arafa recently were awarded a $293,000 Middle East Partnership Initiative grant from USAID and HED.

At the AEJMC conference, Auter and UL Lafayette master’s candidate, Erica Ashton, presented a research paper co-authored by them and Prof. Mohamed Soliman of Mansoura University in Egypt. The paper focused on U.S. and Egyptian students’ parasocial interaction with music video performers.