IFDS Participant Testimonial: Russia Program

Hardwick found that her experiences as part of CIEE's faculty development seminar broadened her teaching in some unexpected areas. As a geographer and "distance-learning" teacher, she uses the experience in a truly global way.

Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Russia, CIEE Style

When a geographer needs a fresh idea for a Russia textbook chapter and a journalist needs a Russian interpreter for an interview, the streets of St. Petersburg and Moscow can provide the perfect setting.

Chico State University geographer Susan Hardwick joined a group of 20 other professors on Council's June 1996 faculty development seminar, entitled "Russia Through the Eyes of the Media: Elections and the New Social Landscape." She was completing a comprehensive textbook -- Russia: A Geography of Change and Endurance (Westview Press, 1997) – and hoped to gather up-to-the-minute data on the culture and geopolitics of the Russian Federation.

The eight-day seminar, leading up to the Russian presidential elections, also provided material for Larry Elliott, a journalist turned communications professor from Bradley University. Elliott was studying the Russian media election coverage from an academic viewpoint for a class he was teaching in mass media. A former journalist now specializing in global media studies, Elliott also used the Russia seminar to write a front-page story about Boris Yeltsin's presidential campaign for the Peoria, Illinois publication, Journal Star.

When Elliott spotted a group of Russian workers carrying protest signs outside a municipal building in Moscow, he called on Hardwick's Russian-language skills to elicit comments about an important election issue – the government's often painfully slow ability to pay their workers. The shipyard laborers and engineers said they hadn't been paid in months and had no money to live on. They told stories of their daily struggle to buy food for their children and pay rent. The protesters gave their names freely, but when asked about who they planned to vote for, one taut-faced woman answered suddenly in halting English, "I won't say who I will vote for at this point" – a sign that talking to journalists, even after glasnost, has its risks.

After the worker interviews, Hardwick and Elliott exchanged notes and thoughts on writing. Hardwick felt that she would like to learn more about writing in a journalistic style to add realism to her upcoming book on Russia. Elliott, a new assistant professor just beginning to write in the academic style, felt that he would like to learn more about how to begin a book. During the next few days, Hardwick and Elliott shared their expertise about writing and discussed how they each planned to use the Russia material in their classrooms. Additionally, Elliott's notes about his Russian experience now introduce the first chapter of Hardwick's book, and his "postcard-style" writing format is used throughout the book to bring personal glimpses of real life in Russia to the reader.

As a testimonial to the value of an overseas experience, Elliott wrote, "While on the overnight train from St. Petersburg to Moscow, one passenger remembered the words of a Russian journalist he had heard two days earlier: There is just no way to understand Russia with your mind. You just have to trust it. You have to feel Russia with your heart."

For Elliott, the Council seminar translated into a featured newspaper story that ran on June 16, the same day Russians went to the polls to elect Boris Yeltsin. But the Russia experiences also paid off immediately in the classroom. During his first month back from Russia, Elliott invited a Russian exchange student at Bradley University to speak to his mass media class and answer questions about culture in today's Russia. The class of more than 100 students eagerly asked questions about Russia, young people's lives there, and the mass media. "The Russia seminar became part of a newly modified class entitled 'The Mass Media in a Global Environment," Elliott says, "and it's particularly helpful in chapter discussions of global mass media today."

Likewise, Hardwick found that her experiences as part of CIEE's faculty development seminar broadened her teaching in some unexpected areas. As a geographer and "distance-learning" teacher, she uses the experience in a truly global way. "This semester, I'm teaching the first international, interactive, distance-education course in our California University system," Hardwick explains. "My comfort level with international students has broadened considerably since the Russia trip. My distance-learning class includes students from Botswana, Tokyo, Kenya, Sweden, Tajikistan, and Malaysia; and our internet conversations need to be based on sharing information globally."

Both Hardwick and Elliott look back on Council's Russia seminar as a very productive setting for a cross-pollination of ideas from different academic disciplines that has produced academic and practical results. "I think our conversations on that midnight train trip through the middle of what seemed like nowhere were symbolic," Elliott says. "It's a big world out there, and we can all get a lot more done working together."

The above is an account by Larry S. Elliott, Ph.D., Department of Communication, Bradley University, and Susan W. Hardwick, Ph.D., Department of Geography and Planning, California State University at Chico, about their experiences participating in Council's June 1996 Seminar in Russia.