NOTES ON PEOPLE (07/09/00)

NOTES ON PEOPLE

Kipa elected to Academy of Pedagogical Sciences

by Lidia Rapuna

KYIV - Dr. Albert Kipa, Saeger Professor of Comparative Literature and Head of the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa., recently accepted his membership credentials in the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine to which he was elected last year.

Dr. Wasyl Kremen, Ukraine's minister of education and current president of the academy, presented the documents during the academy's annual meeting in Kyiv. Dr. Mykola Zhulynsky, vice prime minister of Ukraine, also attended the session.

Dr. Kipa, who spoke on "Democratic Reform and Higher Education" during the proceedings, was nominated for membership by Dr. Mykola Shkil, rector, and Dr. Petro P. Chopko, professor of literature, at the Drahomanov State Pedagogical University in Kyiv.

"The election was unanimous, well deserved, and we look forward to a mutually rewarding relationship," noted Rector Shkil, a former president of the academy who had visited Muhlenberg College and who previously invited Dr. Kipa to Kyiv for lectures at the university. Rector Shkil also served as host for the Kyiv segment of the "Societies in Transition" seminar for American professors which was planned and coordinated by Dr. Kipa as a Fulbright Group Project.

Dr. Kipa was born in Kyiv and grew up in New York City. He received his undergraduate diploma from the City College of the City University of New York and his graduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently a vice-president of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S.A. and is the author of studies focusing on selected aspects of Slavic-Western literary and cultural relations.

In the past he has served on a national advisory council to the U.S. Department of Education, was president of the Assembly of Chapter Presidents of the American Association of Teachers of German, as well as of the Pennsylvania State Modern Language Association, and has been the recipient of awards and grants from the Fulbright program, the National Endowment for the Humanities, IREX and the Goethe Institute.

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