Expanding Knowledge and Educational Perspectives in Iowa
International Programs welcomed five Junior Faculty Development Program fellows to Iowa City for Spring 2008 semester
by Lini Ge
On Jan. 13, 2008, five Junior Faculty Development Program Fellows received a warm welcome from the University of Iowa International Programs upon their arrival in Iowa City. Their one-semester educational and cultural exchange with UI faculty and students marked the 10th anniversary of the involvement of International Programs with the scholar program.
JFDP is funded by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State. The program provides promising junior university faculty from certain Eurasian and Southeast European countries the opportunity to expand knowledge in their academic fields and acquire new educational perspectives with exposure to the U.S. educational system.
International Programs provides administrative and logistical support for the JFDP fellows, including access to a workspace, computer and library resources, and undergraduate and graduate courses within each fellows’ academic discipline. Also, JFDP fellows work closely with faculty mentors from the appropriate academic departments to develop their scholarship in their fields of study, gather new academic materials and resources, and enlighten the UI faculty and students on education and life in their home countries. Participants in the JFDP are encouraged to build relationships between U.S. universities and their home universities in order to support ongoing contact and collaboration.
Elena Osinsky, JFDP Coordinator at the UI, said the scholars’ stay on the UI campus serves several purposes.
"It gives the JFDP scholars an opportunity to promote the development of a growing network of academics among those regions and the United States. The JFDP scholars would develop new courses and implement curriculum reforms at their home institutions”. Various offices within International Programs have been affiliated with the program during the past few years, including the Council for International Visitors to Iowa Cities (CIVIC). Since beginning its involvement with the program in 2001, CIVIChas been the fellows’ initial contact in Iowa City. CIVICfacilitates all necessary procedures for the fellows to settle in for their semester in Iowa, including assistance with obtaining social security cards, opening bank accounts, and finding apartments and furniture.
“They live with host families usually for a week to two weeks. This year we got them settled in a week,” said Marianne Weiss, office coordinator of CIVIC. “Our job is to meet them at the airport and from that point ‘mother’ them until they are settled in their own homes. We become their family away from home.”
The five JFDP Fellows said they have enjoyed their stay in Iowa City. Some said they generated new ideas about educational system reform in their home countries through auditing classes at the UI. Some made friends with people with backgrounds very different from their own. Some volunteered on-campus though cultural events and speaking engagements. The following are snapshots of the fellows’ academic, social and cultural exchanges at the University of Iowa and in Iowa City, the joyful memory of which, as they all believe, will remain with them after they return to their home countries.
Nikola Bodiroga
Belgrade, Serbia
Nikola Bodiroga
Nikola Bodiroga reads a lot. A faculty member in the Faculty of Law at the University of Belgrade, Serbia, Bodiroga spends four to five hours every day reading publications in his field, including textbooks, articles, literature and law reviews. A self-proclaimed ferocious reader, Bodiroga said he was amazed by the large choices of new books in the Law library at the University of Iowa, most of which are not available in Serbia.
“The Law library is very useful for me to generate new ideas on writing,” he said.
Bodiroga received his bachelor’s degree in law from the University of Belgrade in 2002. Between 2003 and 2004, he worked for the Serbian government and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In June 2004, he became a faculty member at the Faculty of Law at the University of Belgrade and around the same time started his own graduate study. In 2006, upon receiving his LL.M., Bodiroga decided to pursue a doctorate in law. In 2007, Bodiroga applied to the JFDP and was assigned to the UI by the JFDP main office in Washington, D.C.
“I didn’t choose Iowa. Iowa chose me,” Bodiroga said, laughing.
For Bodiroga, Iowa City is “incomparable” to Belgrade, the capital and the largest city of Serbia, which has a population of two million. However, he said he found it easy to adjust to the new environment.
“[Iowa City seems like] a small community where people take care of each other,” he said. “Public services are very good, and everything seems easy to find.”
While Bodiroga was staying with his host family, he found a house with a basement for rent on North Linn Street and got everything settled within two days. Bodiroga said he was very satisfied with the house, which was completely furnished when he moved in and about a 10-minute walk from campus.
While on campus, Bodiroga spent most of his time researching at the Law Library, and attending law courses, including Civil Procedure, Comparative Law and Energy Law.
“The Law library is very useful for me, so are the courses that I attended,” Bodiroga said. “During the courses, some new questions are asked. Some new dilemmas are open from different perspectives. That is a challenge for me.”
He also collected literature for his doctoral dissertation and wrote scientific articles that will be published in Belgrade.
Bodiroga said that he is fascinated by the American legal system, which is organized on a completely different basis from that in Serbia.
“The difference is in one word—efficiency,” Bodiroga said. “The cases last too long in my home country. Also, in America judges have greater importance. In my country, they only interpret the law. In America, they create the law.”
While on campus, Bodiroga volunteered to give a few lectures, including a lecture on the Serbian presidential election and another regarding Kosovo independence for the International Law Association.
In his free time, Bodiroga said he loves swimming. In Belgrade, he swims four times a week. Bodiroga also enjoys watching plays and movies and had the opportunity to visit the Riverside Theater during his stay. An avid traveler, Bodiroga visited Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Minneapolis while in the United States.
Bodiroga has been working on a book on changes in Serbian civil enforcement procedure for several months, which he expects to be published in Serbia this fall and will spend July and August in Germany for a research project, thanks to a scholarship provided by the Max Planck Institute in Hamburg. He intends to finish his doctoral program when he returns to Serbia from Germany.
“My long-term goal is to become a full professor and to be involved in creating a new higher education system in Serbia,” Bodiroga said with a smile.
Lili Khechuashvili
Tbilisi, Georgia
Lili Khechuashvili
Lili Khechuashvili celebrated her birthday in Iowa City about a week after her arrival, with four the other JFDP fellows as her guests.
“I even got presents—a Hawkeye T-shirt and necklace,” Khechuashvili said excitedly. “It was our first casual meeting.”
Back in her hometown Tbilisi, the capital city of Georgia, Khechuashvili is an assistant professor at the Personality and Clinical Psychology Unit in the Psychology Department under the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at Tbilisi State University. The courses she teaches include Personality Psychology, Basics in Psychology, Research Methods in Psychology, and Academic Writing in Georgian Language. She also works as an assistant in the Clinical Psychology course. In fall 2007, she had a book published together with two co-authors—Academic Writing for Beginners—which was written in Georgian.
Aside from her academic duty, Khechuashvili also practiced as a psychologist in the military. From 1999-2003, she worked part-time at the Special Forces Brigade under the Ministry of Defense of Georgia. She started as a psychologist and later established the psychology department, providing diagnosis and individual consulting and rehabilitation programs for the service men. There she did most ofthe research for her doctoral dissertation, “Stress-coping Strategies and Personality Profile of Georgian Military Personnel.”
Khechuashvili’s first impression of Iowa City was “snow, cold and warm people,” as she posted on the JFDP online forum not long after her arrival.
“I didn’t expect such warm people and friendly atmosphere. It was a nice surprise,” she said. “I like to observe, to gain new experience because of my field. I don’t lose any chance to visit new places and meet new people.”
Khechuashvili spent most of her time at the UI collecting new data to update the literature review for her dissertation, as well as preparing for a new course at her home university—Psychology of Close Relationships. She also enjoyed meeting people from other countries and broadening her horizons by making friends.
In her free time, Khechushvili said she enjoyed figure skating at the Coral Ridge Mall. From the age of four until she was ten, she received professional training at a figure skating school in Tibilisi.
In the fall, Khechuashvili will continue to teach at Tbilisi State University. She also plans to practice as a psychologist on top of her teaching responsibility.
“I’m interested in both,” she said. “Because teaching without practice is not of high quality in psychology. Practice without theory doesn’t make sense either.”
Shehla Nazarova
Baku, Azerbaijan
Shehla Nazarova
Shehla Nazarova’s scholarly research focuses on American literature, but she has a bit of a British accent. Her trip to Britain might have somewhat influenced her accent, according to Nazarova. She studied at Manchester University in the summer of 1997, though she is quite sure she had the accent before she went to Britain.
“When I went to England, people already told me ‘you’ve got a British accent,’” she said. “In the Soviet Union, we had all kinds of recordings coming from Britain. That exactly influenced my accent.”
After receiving a five-year Soviet diploma in English and German languages at the Institute of Foreign Languages in Baku, Azerbaijan in 1987, Nazarova started teaching English at Baku State University. In 2000-2001, she studied at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, on a Fulbright scholarship and received her Master of Arts in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). She is currently a full-time senior teacher at Baku State University, teaching English and academic writing.
To enrich her experience as an instructor, Nazarova is engaged in volunteer work involving an extensive amount of student interaction. As an evaluator and facilitator at the American Studies Centre in Baku, initiated by the U.S. Department of State in 2002, Nazarova conducted interviews with the students to evaluate levels of knowledge and organized lectures given by American professors. She also worked as an evaluator of the Civic Education Project sponsored by the Soros Foundation, where she interviewed grantees who had applied for scholarships to teach in Azerbaijan, attended their courses and observed the students.
“I reported the teachers’ readiness, teaching materials, teaching methodology, what students like and dislike about the courses, their needs and preferences,” Nazarova said. “These reports were useful for their further application for the grant.”
As a JFDP fellow, Nazarova attended literature classes at the UI. She said she enjoyed visiting the libraries. On each visit, she would browse through a number of books, selecting two or three to take home to read. A lover of books, she said her main hobby is to “work on textbooks.”
“I have a lot of textbooks in journalism, literature, newspaper, lots of stuff,” Nazarova said. “I don’t teach only languages. I’m quite open to lots of innovations.”
Nazarova said she also uses films in her classrooms and has students watch them and come up with reports and conclusions.
Her husband, a journalist, editor and producer at Lider TV in Baku, is also a “well-read person.” “He is highly intelligent and it’s very interesting to talk to him,” Nazarova said. “He may tell you about the Chinese history. You can get a lot of information from him.”
Though the couple seldom reads together, Nazarova said they enjoy discussing what they have read and sharing their reflections on the readings.
While in Iowa City, Nazarova said she missed her dog, Gina, a 2 1/2-year-old pitbull terrier. Nazarova said she loves to play with Gina in a small garden in front of her apartment building in Baku.
Nazarova said she plans to apply her experience in the U.S. to her teaching and volunteer work in Baku.
“The result of my experience will be felt at my home university in the newly opened Faculty of American Studies,” she said. “I’m going to teach American literature there.”
Nazarova also plans to give workshops at the American Studies Centre, and to work on materials for the International Law course she teaches, with literature as a language resource.
“Literature is a huge sphere. You don’t know which to choose for your own liking,” she said. “But there are some criteria that I think are the best to present American literature. Now I’m realizing it here.”
Elenmari Pletikos
Pula, Croatia
Elenmari Pletikos
Elenmari Pletikos is fascinated with languages. Not only does she research on word prosody, sentence intonation, sociolinguistics, and public speaking, She also speaks several languages fluently, including Croatian, German, English and Italian. She also understands Russian, Ukrainian, French, Romanian and Slovenian at the elementary level.
Her fascination with languages initiated in a high school gym in her hometown Pula, Croatia, said the instructor at the Department of Phonetics in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Zagreb, Croatia.
After Pletikos received bachelor’s degrees in German language and literature and phonetics in 1999, she worked as a research assistant on projects for the Ministry of Science of Croatia. She also practiced as a language and speech consultant for journalists and anchors at Croatian Television. A few months later, Pletikos started teaching at the University of Zagreb while pursuing her own doctoral degree. Two years ago, she also began teaching at the University of Dubrovnik.
Though Pletikos came to Iowa City on Jan. 13 with the other JFDP fellows, she had to fly back to Zagreb on Feb. 22 for an important arrangement—her doctoral dissertation defense. She defended her dissertation, “Acoustics Analysis of Croatian Accents,” on Feb. 25.
“The committee had tough questions. But I was comfortable because I knew what I was talking about. I was prepared for what they might ask me,” Pletikos said, adding that the support from her friends and former professors contributed to her fulfillment of a successful defense.
Four days after her defense, Pletikos returned to Iowa City, a place she said initially surprised her “in a nice way.” Before she came to Iowa City, Pletikos stayed in Lawrence, Kansas with other JFDP fellows for a few days.
“For the first time I saw the downtown of an Amrican city. It was surprisingly small and very far from the campus. I didn’t like it,” she said. Iowa City, though, in her opinion, is much prettier and has everything in proximity, as Pletikos has found out.
“I like this closeness. I think it’s a quality of life,” she said.
There were other surprises for Pletikos during her time in Iowa City. After watching a play that she thought was great at Riverside Theatre, she was shocked that the audience only applauded once.
“In Croatia, even for the worst play, the audience will give two to three applauses, which is considered polite. If it’s a great play, you do it five to six times,” she said.
It was also a new experience for Pletikos to attend a potluck party for recent graduates at the house of Roumyana Slabakova, chair and associate professor in the UI Department of Linguistics and Pletikos’ academic adviser at the university.
“For me it was new to see that the head of the linguistic department has [such] a potluck party at her home,” she said. “Of course as a student, I had good and friendly relationships with my professors. But nobody [at my university] practices such kind of mixture between work and privacy.”
Such cultural surprises, though, do not hinder Pletikos from enjoying her stay at Iowa City. Through auditing classes in rhetoric, speech pathology and audiology, Pletikos noticed that the undergraduate study in the U.S. is far less rigid as that in Croatia.
“In Croatia, from the first day you study one field, all courses have been set and they don’t change for years,” she said. “Here the undergraduate study is not so focused. So if you do bachelor’s on one thing, you can do master’s in a completely different field. I like it very much that you can combine and change things during your study.”
In her free time, Pletikos said she enjoyed spending time with a diverse group of friends from Croatia, Serbia, Poland, Spain, and Colombia. She also volunteered for the Slavic Bazaar and the NAMI Walk, which is a national campaign to raise money and awareness to help people with mental illness. She also proofread some Croatian documents for the Iowa Legal Aid.
Pletikos will apply to tenure at the University of Zagreb this fall.
Dildora Ravshanovna
Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Dildora Ravshanovna
Dildora Ravshanovna arrived in Iowa City on Jan. 13, 2008, but she thought it was Jan. 15. She said the lengthy trip from Uzbekistan to Kazakhstan, Frankfurt, Washington D.C., Kansas City, and eventually to Iowa City was very trying.
“Oh my goodness, I was air-sick,” Ravshanovna said. “When we got to Washington D.C., I said, ‘I will not go anywhere. I want to go back.’ But my colleague said, ‘Dildora, it’s our last destination. And you can do it.’”
To her surprise, she adapted to the new environment quite smoothly. Ravshanovna contributed it to Jean and Jix Lloyd-Jones, her host family whom she spent 10 days with before she moved into a rented house.
“They were very helpful. I didn’t feel any barriers, any cultural shock or differences,” Ravshanovna said. “I felt like home.”
Back home in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Ravshanovna is an instructor of several English courses at the Uzbek State World Languages University (USWLU), including Introduction to Linguistics, Vocabulary in Use and practicum courses. She also works as an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) trainer at Muallim gulshani Education and Consulting Centre at Tashkent.
One of Ravshanovna’s major goals at the UI was to develop the Introduction to Linguistics and Vocabulary in Use courses through combining the innovative and interactive teaching methods in the U.S. However, the first few classes Ravshanovna attended were quite different from what she had expected.
“All the sessions were led in lectures. I was surprised: why lecture?” she said.
Soon she found out that what is called the “cooperative teaching” in Uzbekistan is also practiced in the U.S.
“In the Introduction to Speech and Hearing Process and Disorders course that I’m auditing, students do a lot of laboratory work. They will talk. They will discuss,” Ravshanovna said. “That is also an interactive method, and it is effective.”
While benefiting from the various courses in her field on campus, Ravshanovna also contributed to the educational system of the university. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings, she helped an instructor teach the Uzbek language course. Although there were only three students in the class—one on campus and two online from Indiana University—Ravshanovna said she enjoyed helping the students with their learning.
Ravshanovna also said she enjoyed staying in the three-bedroom house co-rented by her and two other JFDP fellows and loved the food in Iowa City, especially the Chinese food in the Old Capitol Mall.
In her free time, Ravshanovna said she liked to go to the Coral Ridge Mall with her roommates, but said most of the time she was thinking about how to apply her experience at the UI to her teaching duties at her university in Tashkent.
“Vocabulary course is new and Introduction to Linguistics is very theoretical in my university and in Uzbek educational system,” she said.
To make both courses more interesting and productive, she intends to develop more innovative and interactive teaching methods and to organize conversational clubs in which students will be able to have discussions with invited professors and experts.
With her colleagues, Ravshanovna will share the JFDP experience by participating in conferences and teacher training sessions organized by the Uzbek Teachers of English Association.
In all, she said, “Experience gained through the observations of American university courses will help me improve Vocabulary and Introduction to Linguistics courses of the Institute for English Language Teacher Education program.”