This award supports students for global learning experiences abroad in Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, Vietnam, Cambodia, Iran or Gabon in summer. Applicants must demonstrate proficiency in the common language of the country in which they wish to study.
Fred Bruhns came to Pitt in 1965 to complete his Ph.D. and join the faculty at GSPIA, where he taught comparative administration and administrative theory. He also held a master’s degree in sociology from Stanford University, and an undergraduate degree from Ohio State University. He retired as professor emeritus in 1985. Following World War II, Bruhns had widespread and varying diplomatic experience with international refugee and U.S. government organizations. Between 1948 and 1964, he served in Austria with the International Refugee Organization, resettling European refugees; in Lebanon and Israel as a Ford Foundation scholar, conducting research on Palestinian refugee attitudes, and in South Vietnam, resettling North Vietnamese refugees. In those years he also served stints in Cambodia, Iran and Gabon under the auspices of the United States Agency for International Development, and in Germany and Greece as a delegate of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.
In 1961, Bruhns was honored with the Royal Order of the Phoenix for service to the Greek government.
When Fred Bruhns came to GSPIA in 1965, his wife E.Maxine joined the staff of the Nationality Rooms, where she subsequently was named director.
E. Maxine Bruhns graduated from the Bridgeport High School in 1941 with high honors and received a scholarship to West Virginia Wesleyan College in Buckhannon. In the spring of 1942, following America's entry into the Second World War, Maxine left Wesleyan to work at the Glenn L. Martin aircraft factory in Hagerstown, MD.
After the war ended, she completed her bachelor's degree in Philosophy and Psychology at Ohio State University in Columbus, OH. At Ohio State, she met and later married (1946) the love of her life, her German refugee husband Fred C. Bruhns. Fred had immigrated to America in 1941 after serving two years in Berlin's Moabiet prison for anti-Nazi activism. He returned to Europe as a second lieutenant in the US Army. His post-war career as a refugee specialist required the couple to travel extensively. Over the course of their marriage, they lived in numerous countries (Austria 1948-50, Lebanon 1952-54, Cambodia 1952-54, South Vietnam 1955-57, Cambodia 1958-59, Iran 1960, Germany 1961, Greece 1962-63 and Gabon 1964.) Maxine maximized these opportunities with numerous accomplishments, including earning a Master's Degree in Psychology at the American University of Beirut, teaching English to Vietnamese Army officers, and doing the same for Buddhist monks in Cambodia. In Greece, she studied the Greek language, Greek dancing and acted in American theater productions. Maxine's natural linguistic talent, combined with her extensive travels and exposure to various cultures, allowed her to attain fluency in French and German and gain a working knowledge of Arabic, Farsi, Greek, and Cambodian.
In 1965, Fred received his PhD and a teaching position at the University of Pittsburgh. Shortly thereafter, Maxine accepted a position as Director of the Nationality Rooms and Intercultural Exchange Programs (NRIEP).
The couple has funded a number of international scholarships and other programs at the University totaling more than $1 million in gifts. About a quarter of the donations have gone to Pitt’s European Union Center of Excellence.