FACES AND PLACES: Ukraine and the University of Illinois (07/22/01)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Ukraine and the University of Illinois

Like most "Big Ten" schools, the University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana has an attractive campus. Not the most beautiful (that honor belongs to the University of Indiana), but lovely none the less.

The University of Illinois is also the home of the annual weeklong Ukrainian Studies Conference which during the past 20 years has brought scholars together from around the world.

I've participated in many of these conferences and, while I could never devote an entire week to this endeavor, I found the time I did spend generally enlightening, usually enjoyable, but occasionally disappointing.

This year was no exception. The conference theme was "Ten Years of Independence of Ukraine." I was the moderator of a panel titled "Does Ukraine Need Education Reform?" I spoke in the affirmative, presenting a paper in which I outlined the pluses and minuses of the present system (see the article "Education in Ukraine" on the left). Among the minuses I emphasized were a rigid curriculum, little attention to individual student differences, poor classroom control, cheating on exams, put downs by teachers and an emphasis on the physical sciences over the social sciences.

With one exception, all the panelists - Ivan Holowinsky (Rutgers), Roman Gromiak (State Pedagogical University of Ternopil), Raisa Movchan (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine), Oksana Pachlovska (Universita di Roma La Sapienza) and Viacheslav Brioukhovetsky (National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy) either avoided the question or defended the status quo. The one exception was Prof. John Fizer (Rutgers) who declared that he honestly did not know enough about the situation to render an opinion. The entire session became rather heated with one Ukrainian American professor in the audience arguing that, given the problems in American education, Ukraine had nothing to learn from the United States; and a teacher from Ukraine suggested that, while the United States offered excellent technical support in terms of textbooks, videos, CDs, etc., Ukrainian teachers would continue to do what they've always done.

Was I disappointed? Yes. Should I have been? No.

During the early days of independence, Ukraine's leaders, especially educators, seemed open to new ideas and formulas from the West. Recently, however, education, like everything else, has begun to drift back to the future. One example: while most international universities follow the three-tiered program of higher education - bachelor, master and doctor - Ukraine elected in 1996 to retain the old Soviet system - bachelor, specialist, aspirant, candidate and doctor. The past is comfortable for Soviet-era bureaucrats who still dominate Ukraine's Ministry of Education.

Fortunately, the conference was not a total bust for me. One of the highlights was a dynamic presentation by Marta Zielyk of the U.S. State Department. As the Ukrainian interpreter for Preisdent Bill Clinton and Vice-President Al Gore during their visits with President Leonid Kuchma, Ms. Zielyk related a number of fascinating stories that were spellbinding. Like other Ukrainian Americans who have served as interpreters, however, she also shared her disappointment with some bureaucrats in Ukraine's government. It seems that the longer Ukraine is independent, the less interest there is in speaking the Ukrainian language.

Another high point for me was resuming my acquaintance with Prof. Volodymyr Serhiychuk of Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv. In 1990, a year before Ukraine's independence, Dr. Serhiychuk invited me to his university to present lectures on the history of Ukrainians in the United States.

The first Ukrainian conference at the University of Illinois was held in June 1982, focusing on Ukrainian literature. Subsequent conferences were devoted to Ukraine's history (1983), 20th century Ukraine (1984) and Ukraine during World War II (1985).

As a result of initiatives by the Shevchenko Scientific Society and First Security Bank in Chicago, the Foundation for Ukrainian Studies at the University of Illinois was established at a meeting in Chicago in 1985. The foundation was headed by Dr. Paul Nadzikewycz until 1989; he was succeeded by Raisa Bratkiv, who serves until the present time.

Between 1982 and 1989 most presentations at the annual conferences were in English; this changed with the arrival of academics from Ukraine in 1989. Thus far, a total of 980 speakers from 24 different countries have presented papers at the conferences; 640 presentations were in Ukrainian and 340 in English.

The individual most responsible for the conferences is Prof. Dmytro Shtohryn who immigrated to the United States in 1950. He completed his Ph.D. studies in Ukrainian literature and library science at the University of Ottawa while working as the Slavic cataloguer in the university of Illinois library and an associate of the university's Russian and east European Center. Thanks in large measure to Dr. Shtohryn and the foundation's financial support, the University of Illinois now has some 70,000 volumes of selected monographs and periodicals dealing with Ukraine, making it one of the largest such collections in the western world.

A fellow academic who has been involved in the conferences since their inception is Dr. Bohdan Rubchak, an accomplished poet and since 1974 a professor of Ukrainian language, culture and literature at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle. Today, the University of Illinois offers M.A. and Ph.D. programs in these Ukrainian subjects.

The conferences have been especially beneficial for professors from Ukraine who did not have an opportunity to meet with academic colleagues from universities in the West during Soviet times or to access many of the publications available at the University of Illinois.

As is usually the case in our community, a small group of enthusiasts have been able to accomplish what once appeared to be an impossible task. With very little funding from the outside (as compared to Harvard or the University Alberta), conferences now totaling 100 weeks of discussion and academic exchange on Ukrainian topics have become a reality in Illinois.

Myron Kuropas' e-mail address is: [email protected].

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