February 2, 2007

by Angela Brown

A conversation with the managing director of CNN.  Another conversation with a sheik. Lively debates with like-minded scholars.  And  a camel ride.

Three members of the University of West Alabama community will have the chance to experience this and more when they attend an international education conference Feb. 25-27 in Abu Dhabi, which is located in the United Arab Emirates.

For this 2007 Education Without Borders conference, organizers expect 800 delegates from 80 countries.  Among these delegates will be UWA’s own Denys Lupshenyuk, Clayton Tartt and Mary Pagliero.

The conference they attend will address such concerns as inequitable access to education and technology and the role of education in ending poverty.  The delegates will participate in group meetings, workshops and debates to facilitate the exchange of ideas and possible solutions to some of these pressing global issues.

According to Catherine Mayerlen, a conference coordinator, Education Without Borders is “one of the largest student-focused events of its kind in the world, and uniquely, it is organized, developed and implemented by a global student organizing committee.” 

Another Education Without Borders committee has chosen a paper written by Denys Lupshenyuk entitled “Enhancing Learning Opportunities by Student Online Collaboration in a Virtual Learning Community” to be presented at this year’s conference.  The project described in this paper will, according to Lupshenyuk, “bring pre-service teachers from two universities located in the U.S. and the Ukraine together into research and collaborative learning experiences.”

This will not be Lupshenyuk’s first time presenting at the Education Without Borders conference. An international student and graduate assistant in the College of Education, he originally hails from the Ukraine, and while still living in the Ukraine in 2005, he submitted a paper that was selected as one of 36 out of 700 entries to be presented at that year’s conference.

Clayton Tartt, like Lupshenyuk, is a non-traditional student, a self-professed “10^th-year senior, with a six-year break in the middle.” He majors in history with a minor in political science.

Tartt helped Lupshenyuk touch up the paper they will be presenting at the conference, and said, “I suppose that writing as many papers as I have for the history department has helped me become a better writer.”  This, in turn, enabled Tartt to put the fine touches on Lupshenyuk’s paper.

Unlike Lupshenyuk, who has visited the UAE before, this will be Tartt’s first time overseas.

Tartt, especially excited about traveling to the Middle East, said that “communication and debate are the only paths to understanding, and if there is one thing that is missing from Americans’ perceptions of the Middle East, it is understanding.  Paving new avenues in education that open lines of communication between every part of the world broadens everyone’s perspective.”

Mary Pagliero, chair of the International Programs Committee, will be attending the conference and broadening her perspectives alongside Lupshenyuk and Tartt.

In particular, Pagliero looks forward to the World Executive Form session, which will feature roundtable discussions concerning the issue of “internationalizing universities to prepare students for a globalized workplace,” and she envisions returning with what she called “tried and proven methods for moving forward UWA’s initiative to internationalize our campus.”

Paliergo also hopes that Lupshenyuk and Tartt’s “first-hand account of travel abroad will spark an interest in other students to look to the possibility of visiting other countries and experiencing other cultures.” 

Students interested in studying abroad can contact Pagliero at mpagliero@uwa.edu.