Funds from the American Councils for International Education (ACIE) and the U.S. Embassy in Moscow have enabled OSU South Centers at Piketon to cooperate with the International Integrated Research Laboratory for Climate Change, Land Use and Biodiversity under the Institute of Ecological and Agricultural Biology at Tyumen State University (UT) in Siberia.
Dr. Rafiq Islam, Program Director, Soil, Water, and Bioenergy Resources at OSU South Centers has a long history of working in Eastern Europe and Central Asian countries. He will develop academic curriculums on Soil and Environmental Quality (undergraduate) and Research Methodology (graduate), virtual teaching, and a short-term visiting scholar exchange (sandwich) program. Bradford Sherman, Publications and Media Editor at South Centers, will edit course materials for virtual teaching and manage online teaching and evaluations, likewise with UT partners.
As their successful proposal stated: “Climate change effects have severely affected Russia’s agricultural and natural ecosystems in Ural and Siberian regions.” UT must modernize its education and research enterprises to become adaptive and responsive to terrestrial carbon cycles.
Tyumen State University was the first university in Tyumen Oblast, founded in 1930. It has 15 institutes and more than 27,000 students, more than 1,900 of them international. It participates in Project 5-100 – the program for improving international competitiveness of Russian institutions of higher education. The medium of instruction is both Russian and English.
Jason Owens