New Direction of Cooperation with Russians in West Virginia

A student from VolgTech presenting on Yoshkar-Ola
Photo Courtesy of Anastasaiia Vorobeva 

Early in the morning on Friday, March 24, nine members of Russian delegation got in a van in Athens and headed to George Washington High School in Charleston, WVa. As per a yearly tradition, Concord University hosts a group of Russian professors and students from Volga State University of Technology (further: VolgaTech) in Yoshkar-Ola, Russia, who come to Concord to explore American culture and to talk about theirs.

    For about 10 years now, the exchange program has been quite successful – Russians  come to Concord once a year  for about 10 days, and Concord representatives would visit Russia in May for about the same amount of time. Before, VolgaTech had an exchange student going to Concord for a semester, and now one of Concord’s students is attending VolgaTech for the second semester in a row.

The idea to expand the friendship between VolgaTech and Concord first came up last year. Dr. Vladimir Shalaev, the head of Russian delegation and the Dean of Social Sciences at VolgaTech, initially came up with the idea to create a bond between two high schools – George Washington High School in Charleston, W.Va., and School #7 in Yoshkar-Ola, Russia.

    The idea of creating this bond led Russian delegation to George Washington High School to visit Brian O’Connell’s class, full of students. The meeting was arranged by Dr. Joseph Manzo, professor of Geography at Concord University, who also drove the delegation to Charleston. Among the visiting students were two Russian girls – Natalia Smirnova, who also served as a translator for the part of the event, and Elena Goncharuk, who made presentations about Yoshkar-Ola.

    Elena Goncharuk, graduate student at VolgaTech, gave a presentation about theaters in Yoshkar-Ola, as theaters are a significant part of Russian culture. Goncharuk enjoyed the school and the students. “I liked how they reacted – looked, and listened,” says Goncharuk in Russian. “You can tell from their faces they are very open [to new things]. Very kind, very good. I was very impressed.” After the class, Goncharuk stayed a bit longer to talk to students, answering questions and exchanging contact information.

    Brian O’Connell, who hosted VolgaTech delegation for the second time, says that this was the first meeting for the project to create the bond between the two schools. He says, “Any time we can bring our people together, wonderful things would come out of it. I think this is the way to really create the world community.” Mr. O’Connell believes that his students were excited to meet Russian guests. “I know they can appear shy sometimes, but they are going to talk about it weeks after weeks.”

    After the class, the delegation stayed for a little longer. Russian guests talked to students, and for Dr. Shalaev discussed the further cooperation with the school official. The idea is to create a cultural exchange program involving Skype conferences and maybe even visits.

    “We want to expand this project in the field of educational cooperation. In addition to the university student exchange, we would like to add high school student exchange,” says Dr. Shalaev. “Last year we were in the Department of Education in Charleston and asked to find us a school for the project. They found George Washington High School. We found school #7 in Yoshkar-Ola for the cooperation from our side. This is a traditional Russian school with good system of cultural development for students. They have a lot of different clubs – sports, musical, art, etc.” Dr. Shalaev says that this year the delegation came for the final “yes” from George Washington High School. “We saw that students and teachers were passionate about the opportunity. They liked the idea of cooperation we proposed,” he said. It was agreed to encourage more detailed conversation between the school principals.

    After the meeting, the delegation said goodbye to the very welcoming students and teachers at George Washington High School, and went to the West Virginia State Museum for a tour, and after that, to the mall.