Panel Sessions:
Following are the descriptions and, in some cases, even volunteers who have offered to coordinate the panels. There will only be 15 panels at the symposium, so we need to know which panels you think are most important.
If you would like to organize one of these panels or have ideas for other panels, contact MoscowSymposium@irex.ru.
To sign up for a particular panel, please submit the registration form at the Embassy website: http://www.usembassy.ru/bilateral/symposium2_form.php
If you are already registered, please send an e-mail to moscowsymposium@irex.ru to indicate your preferred panel sessions. Please indicate your top five choices – we will make every attempt to accommodate your preferences.
If you have additional suggestions for topics which would be useful to discuss or would like to organize a panel, please send an e-mail to moscowsymposium@irex.ru. We are particularly interested in hearing more about the needs and interests of Russian universities.
Suggested Panel Topics:
The panel will include discussion of the challenges in communication between US and Russian partners, language barriers and different communication styles. It will also focus on the critical importance of faculty mentors, incorporating faculty into the professional life of Russian and US academies, and developing mutually beneficial research opportunities, as well as the strategy that elicited the most cooperation and which achieved the best results in the projects held at Indiana University.
Target audience: Russians who intend to enter into partnership agreements with American universities.
The panel will include discussion of the expectations of American universities who enter into partnerships with Russian universities. Panel members will address challenges in communication between U.S. and Russian partners, language barriers and different communication styles. It will also focus on hopes and expectations of the American partners, as well as best practices for building partnerships.
Target audience: Americans who intend to enter into partnership agreements with Russian universities.
The panel will include discussion of the expectations of Russian universities who enter into partnerships with American universities. Panel members will address challenges in communication between U.S. and Russian partners, language barriers and different communication styles. It will also focus on hopes and expectations of the American partners, as well as best practices for building partnerships.
The participants will describe the range of SUNY’s programs with Moscow State University and other Russian universities over the past 30 years, with an emphasis on successes and unique challenges
The panel will dwell upon the problems of professional education such as public administration, management, journalism etc., and the ways faculty must attend to them (e.g. extensive oral and written communication, group work, different types of analytic work, working with clients, etc.) in the curriculum.
The presenter will demonstrate Multimedia Encyclopedia Russia-USA: 20th Century – a multimedia historical teaching course, based on the comparative analysis of the histories of Russia and the USA in the 20th Century and illustrated by corresponding movie sequences and photographs shot during the described periods. Two versions of the proposed encyclopedia will be produced: the first one for use on the Internet, the other for distribution on CDs and/or DVDs.
The MME will bring those original photographs, reproductions, documentary movies and audio records, which previously were available only to a limited number of professional researchers directly to the classroom. The opportunity to use such material will not only provide students with a qualitatively new kind of additional information (as the saying goes: it’s better to see it once than to hear about it a hundred times), but will also stimulate real interest in their study subject – the more questions they ask, the more active the study process will be. For the students the opportunity to see the real pictures of past events, and the faces of their participants, etc. with their own eyes, will mean that their study of history and cultures of other nations will not be a mere mechanical process of remembering names and dates but an independent creative research.
The interactive aspects of such an encyclopedia, especially its capability for remote editing of video movies, can broaden the scope of history education, introducing some entirely new techniques capable of increasing students’ activities. For instance, students of different countries could be invited to participate in various history study competitions, or in a festival of video movies based on archival material, or in a multimedia presentation on a given topic.
An interactive course has been developed by East Carolina University in which they participate with three English speaking international schools via the Internet and digital cameras. The goal of the course is to create an open, personal exchange among the students of each country through a series of classroom discussions lead by their instructors. Through the course students are exposed to information on that country's cultural background and traditions, family, meaning of work, and meaning of life and hopes for the future. Many of the current students are communications or international studies majors, but it would also be beneficial to education majors or those looking at teaching English as a foreign language. The course is co-taught with three international universities. Each class is digitally recorded and simultaneously broadcast through the Internet to the respective partner school. In addition, each student is paired with a partner student in the foreign school. The pairing allows for a partnership in which the students are required to work together to complete papers and projects required by their professors as well as a more in-depth discussion of the topic of the day.
<<No description available>>
The panel will be devoted to exploring ways to move U.S.-based exchanges beyond the traditional network of local partners, giving participants the opportunity to experience the full diversity of American life and culture. AED/Open World will share some good ideas and practices that may be useful to other organizations.
Coordinator – Barbara Partee, Department of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
The “Bringing More Americans to Russia” working group made the recommendation at the first U.S.-Russia Exchanges in March 2004 that more information on the exchange visitor visa process be made available to the public. This panel will focus on the general rules of applying to U.S. graduate schools for Russian students, including information sources, and visa issues. Additionally, Russian visa information for Americans coming to Russia will also be provided.
The panel will discuss the importance of exchange programs alumni associations as a tool to influence community and regional development as well as numerous organizational issues with regard to such associations and their activities.
Organizer – Dr. Bridget Gersten, English Language Officer, U.S. Embassy
Leading American-style programs and institutions from Moscow and regional universities will address offering U.S. graduate students English teaching internships in Russia and explore ways of getting credit in their U.S. universities for this "practice" training in Russia, while being supervised by Russian ELT specialists. Representatives of U.S. universities with graduate TEFL programs - will be invited to find partner institutions in Russia. This panel will discuss problems and opportunities, as well as brainstorm solutions and focus on next steps for implementation.
The University of Wyoming and its Saratov higher education partners have 12 years of experience in exchange activities. By working with others in the community, including Rotary club, they plan to organize a panel session on exchanges on a broader scale and indicate how synergies arise through the partnering of distinct entities, from service organizations to academia.
A fair number of American scholars come to Moscow or St. Petersburg, but regional universities have a more difficult time attracting scholars, either long-term or for short visits. This panel will present a variety of programs and ideas for how regional Russian universities can receive more American scholars, students and visitors.
Coordinator – Marissa Fushille
This panel will discuss details to consider when planning conferences, partnership activities, and other events. It will consider principles of audience development, information dissemination, planning and details, results and team-building.
Coordinator – Barbara Conaty, Regional Information Resource Officer, U.S. Embassy
Several American companies provide academic, public, special and school libraries with solutions that support Web-based research, reference and learning. These collections of monographs and reference resources span hundreds of subject areas and can be accessed through an intuitive, easy-to-use interface that offers a single point of access. Patrons will find the latest information technology titles, reference essentials, business and economics resources, best-selling fiction, and more. With this technology, libraries can provide patrons and staff with simultaneous, multi-user access to a growing collection of more than 60,000 full-text, digital books, reports, and other authoritative content from leading publishers.
At present, the largest number of American high school, university-level and graduate students come to Russia to study advanced language, sometimes along side specialized work in a major field that is not language related. Last year American Councils placed 450 students in Russia for this purpose. Last year also marked the start of the U.S. government-funded Flagship Language Initiative in Russian, the only program focused on training to higher levels of language proficiency.
Those who registered at the embassy web site have expressed interest
in the following topics for which organizers are still needed: