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MCC Daily Tribune Archive

Bartkovich Named to SUNY Team to Advance SLN Internationally


State University of New York Chancellor Robert L. King has announced the formation of the SUNY Learning Network Cross-National Project to increase the use of distance learning technology and promote educational cooperation across international borders. Dr. Jeff Bartkovich, vice president of Educational Technology Services, is one of nine named to the project team.

Inspired by the success of existing partnerships between SUNY and international institutions of higher education, staff from the SUNY Learning Network worked with the SUNY Office of International Programs and 45 members of the SUNY faculty to create the new SLN Cross-National Project. Faculty at SUNY and their overseas partners will create credit-bearing courses and utilize the award-winning SUNY Learning Network to deliver online classes to students around the world, enriching their respective learning environments through the collaboration and interaction of ideas and perspectives from other cultures. Credits will be awarded by students’ home institutions.

“The Cross-National Project is a major achievement in promoting cultural exploration and collaboration among our students,” said Chancellor King. “It builds on our successes in existing international academic partnerships and will provide ever greater opportunities in the academic diversity and innovation in online learning for which SUNY is known world-wide.”

There are timely reasons for undertaking the work. Strengthening higher education through international activities is one of the chancellor’s goals and, with the creation of the Cross-National Project, SUNY now has another platform necessary to realize it. The SLN is an ideal platform for launching international distance learning courses; experienced SUNY faculty members are ready and willing to partner with international peers; and the SUNY Office of International Programs is well placed to help establish professional relationships between SUNY campuses and universities abroad.

King indicated that online courses with an international dimension provide students abroad the opportunity to experience American-style higher education and give SUNY students an opportunity to expand their international understanding in ways they would never otherwise have had. It is an ideal example of the value that online education brings to the university.

Several successful partnerships between SUNY and institutions of higher education located in Belarus and the United Kingdom have produced courses where students and faculty from partner institutions collaborate for mutual benefit.

Examples of successful partnerships include:
*An upper division sociology course, “Social Control,” taught jointly in Spring 2004 by Distinguished Service Professor Craig Little of SUNY Cortland’s Department of Sociology and his online partner Professor Larissa Titarenko, Faculty of Sociology, Belarus State University, which enrolls students from Cortland, Minsk, Moscow and Australia.

*A two-semester video production course, “Cross-Cultural Video Production,” taught during 2002-03 and 2003-04 from SUNY Purchase with students in Purchase and Belarus. Students of Professor Jon Rubin of the Film Studies program at SUNY Purchase and Professor Alla Pigalskaya of European Humanities University work together to write and produce videos, and send their work back and forth electronically to enable their collaboration. Professor Rubin expects to offer this course again next year with new partners from Ibero-American University in Mexico City and Istanbul Bilgi University in Turkey. The course Web site can be viewed at https://rachel.ns.purchase.edu/~jrubin/.

*A political/social science course, “The European Union,” team-taught from SUNY Fredonia, SUNY Cortland, Jamestown Community College and Manchester Metropolitan University, England. Through this course students have the opportunity to participate in EuroSim, a model European Union organized jointly by Fredonia’s Institute for European Union Studies at the State University of New York and the Transatlantic Consortium for European Union Studies and Simulations, a consortium of European and U.S. colleges and universities. EuroSim will be held this year at SUNY Fredonia, April 7-10.

Members of the SLN Cross-National Project have been appointed to a steering committee and will meet in Albany on March 25 to discuss and pursue new opportunities.

Members of the steering committee are:
Jeffrey Bartkovich, Monroe Community College
Craig Little, SUNY Cortland
Silvia Chelala, Empire State College
Amy Gumaer, Hudson Valley Community College
Scott Turner, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry
Max Lifchitz, SUNY Albany
Jon Rubin, SUNY Purchase
Laurie Buonanno, SUNY Fredonia
Yvonne Petrella, SUNY Oswego

Cynthia Cooper
Public Affairs
03/28/2005