Education and Culture Highlights of 2011

CAPITAL REGION STUDENTS TRAVEL TO TULA

The Albany-Tula Alliance sent three Capital Region students to Tula in September 2011 with Russian-speaking chaperone Lana Sullivan. Education and Culture Committee Chair Barbara Jancar-Webster noted, “We are very proud to be able to recognize the initiative and talent of these young people.”

Eleventh-grader Wyatt Smith of Clifton Park won the 2nd Annual Albany-Tula Alliance Student Essay Contest with his essay on the role the space race might play in maintaining world peace and technological cooperation. Wyatt has been home-schooled since 5th grade and has augmented his homeschooling since 9th grade by taking classes at Union College and RPI, where he has earned straight A’s. One of a select group of students in New York state in competition math, he is also a National Merit and AP scholar, a passionate musician and athlete, and is training as a counselor at a national camp for highly gifted children.

Accompanying Wyatt to Tula were Russian-Studies Olympiad winners David Connor and Alessandra Pratt. The Olympiad is modeled upon a highly successful American Studies Olympiad created last year by Professor Sergey Pukhanov of Tula State University. First-place winner David Connor, a junior and honors student at Tamarac High School, has studied Russian since 7th grade and recently visited Moscow and St. Petersburg. He has participated for the past four years in the American Councils for International Education’s Olympiad of Spoken Russian, and in that organization’s Russian Essay Contest, earning silver medals in both.

Alessandra Pratt is an honor roll student at North Warren Central School, where she participates in school athletics and serves as Class Treasurer and in the Foreign Language, school newspaper, yearbook, and Varsity clubs.

OPEN WORLD DELEGATION FINDS NEW APPROACHES TO EDUCATION

In April 2011, the Albany/Tula Alliance hosted six Russian educators under the sponsorship of the Open World Leadership Program of the U.S. Library of Congress. The Alliance has been the recipient of Open World grants for the past ten years, and is grateful for the support Open World has shown for our efforts to strengthen and develop cooperation with Tula, Russia. This year’s theme was “new approaches in education,” with a focus on the innovative role of U.S. community colleges in developing curricula to train a workforce that needs ever-complex skills. Learn more>>

The group spent a week in the Capital Region, visiting institutions of higher education, including our community colleges and Empire State College, known for its distance learning courses. The action-packed week included:

• Tour of the Capitol building with Assemblyman Jack McEneny and meetings with Assemblyman Bob Reilly, Senator Neil Breslin, and an introduction on the Assembly Floor by Alec Brook-Krasny.
• Serving as jury for Round III of the Alliance’s first Russian Studies Olympiad.
• Visits with Union Graduate College’s School of Management, Schenectady County Community College, Empire State College, Hudson Valley Community College, the new TecSmart Campus in Malta, and SUNY Central Administration.

We would like to thank all of the Alliance members who made the visit possible and we look forward to supporting new cooperative efforts, such as offering common courses through distance learning.

OLYMPIAD WINNERS VISIT THE CAPITAL REGION

The Albany Tula Alliance’s Olympiad was modeled on the American Studies Olympiad created in 2010 by Sergei Pukhanov of Tula State University as a way for Russian Students to deepen their knowledge of American culture, history, and education. When Professor Pukhanov, Director of International Relations at Tula State University, won a grant from IREX to hold an Olympiad in American Studies in 2010, Committee member Mary Emerson took the lead in inviting three teachers from Schenectady High School to prepare reading lists, study questions and test questions on US history and culture for the event. The three teachers then went to Tula to meet the student contestants and to participate in judging Olympiad submissions.

We were pleased to host the winners of the 2010 American Studies Olympiad for two weeks in April 2011. The winners of that competition were Tula State University student Evgenia Istomina and Lev Tolstoy Pedagogical Institute student Janna Shalimva. Their visit coincided with the Open World Leadership Delegation. But members of the Alliance, in particular Sonja Stark, made sure that they had ample opportunity to tour the region, taking them to New York City, Boston, Saratoga and the Adirondacks. While here, the two students also participated in judging the American finalists’ presentations for the first Russian Studies Olympiad. Both Evgenia and Janna have written short essays about their experiences here.

ROAD TO PARADISE PREMIERES

After 18 months of hard work by Committee member Dawn Stuart Weinraub, who translated Russian musical Road to Paradise into English, an abridged production of this musical theater premiered on Sunday May 22nd at St. Joseph Hall at The College of St. Rose. The original Russian text and music were submitted to the Committee for possible performance by Tula composer and lyricist Vera Trofimova. Thanks to Vera’s CD with the music and Dawn’s wonderful translation, the musical was approved by the Alliance Board for presentation in May 2011 as part of the Alliance’s 20th anniversary celebration. The musical was narrated by local television personality Benita Zahn and sung by the composer herself along with an ensemble of local singers.  Check out the video on our YOUTUBE channel or here ~

OPEN WORLD GRANT ALLOWS RUSSIAN TEACHERS TO VISIT THE CAPITAL REGION

In April 2011, the Albany-Tula Alliance hosted six Russian educators under the sponsorship of the Open World Leadership Program of the U.S. Library of Congress. The Alliance has been the recipient of Open World grants for the past ten years, and is grateful for the support Open World has shown for our efforts to strengthen and develop cooperation with Tula, Russia.

This year’s theme was “new approaches in education,” with a focus on the innovative role of U.S. community colleges in developing curricula to train a workforce that needs ever- complex skills. The group spent a week in the Capital Region, visiting institutions of higher education, including our community colleges and Empire State College, known for its distance learning courses.

The action-packed week included:

• Tour of the Capitol building with Assemblyman Jack McEneny and meetings with Assemblyman Bob Reilly, Senator Neil Breslin, and an introduction on the Assembly Floor by Alec Brook-Krasny
• Serving as jury for Round III of the Alliance’s first Russian Studies Olympiad
• Visits with Union Graduate College’s School of Management, Schenectady County Community College, Empire State College, Hudson Valley Community College, the new TecSmart Campus in Malta, and SUNY Central Administration

We would like to thank all of the Alliance members who made the visit possible and we look forward to supporting new cooperative efforts, such as offering common courses through distance learning.