Russian students visit
campus to meet U.S. partners

Meeting at UD are (from left) Prof. Gennedy Konstantinov from the State University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russian student Constantine Smirnov, UD faculty member John Kmetz and UD senior Deirdre Woon-Sue.

 

Ten foreign students spent last week touring some Delaware companies, attending lectures on campus and making oral presentations of the final papers they had written for the course, titled "Seminar on Organizations."

It was a full week for the business administration students–and, they traveled nearly 5,000 miles to take part in it.

The students, from the State University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, took the course jointly with one section of UD's BUAD 429 students this semester, part of an experiment in high-tech international business study devised by John Kmetz, associate professor of management in the College of Business and Economics. During most of the semester, the Russian students attended class and worked with professors at their university, while their American counterparts did the same at UD. When it came time to write their final research papers, the students formed cross-cultural teams and collaborated via e-mail and the Internet.

Last week, 10 of the Russian students came to Delaware to wrap up the course and meet the UD students face-to-face. They presented their research in three afternoon sessions and visited five local companies, accompanied by some of the UD students.

"They decided on their own that they wanted to come, and they paid their own way," Gennedy Konstantinov, the professor from the Moscow university who accompanied the group, said. "They are very motivated and very interested in the United States."

Kmetz said he plans to refine and expand the experiment, adding that, in this semester's test group, students were "thrown to the wolves" and left to work out some of the details of the international collaboration on their own.

"They've had a great experience," Kmetz said. "Both groups of students have had the opportunity to hear from their counterparts on all sorts of business and management issues from the perspective of the other culture."

The program developed after Michael Ginzberg, dean of the College of Business and Economics, invited a member of the Moscow faculty to UD in the fall to meet with professors and administrators here, Kmetz said. The idea of having students at the two universities take a course jointly, he said, grew out of some of those meetings.

"Each team had a topic for a paper–ours was Russian management–and we set up Yahoo e-groups to communicate," Bryan Hoffman, BE 2001 said, just before his nine-person team presented a summary of their work last week. "We posted our papers and made changes back and forth, and then we [at UD] put them in better English and consolidated them."

Because of the distance in miles and difference in time zones, he said, the two groups were unable to set up any videoconferences. They spoke to each other directly for the first time last week when the Russians arrived in Delaware.

"It took us awhile to get things coordinated," Michael Smith, BE 2001 said, "but it worked out fine. I think the idea is worth continuing."

Anyone interested in learning more about this experiment can attend "Collaborating Across Borders," a program offered by the Center for Teaching Effectiveness from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Tuesday, June 5, in 208 Gore Hall, at which Kmetz will speak. The program is part of the Teaching, Learning and Technology Summer Institute for Faculty.

–Ann Manser

Photo by DUANE PERRY