Five educators from Uzbekistan are on the 91探花campus this week, continuing an exchange of time and talents that will culminate in a conference in Tashkent 鈥� Uzbekistan鈥檚 capital city 鈥� this fall and another in Seattle in spring of 2006.
The visit is part of a project for which about $1 million in grant money was awarded in June of 2003 by the U.S. State Department鈥檚 Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, said Rich Hawkins, grant coordinator for the Uzbekistan Educational Partnership Program, sponsored jointly by the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilization and the Jackson School of International Studies. Hawkins said the grant鈥檚 goals are to support the study and teaching of comparative religion in Uzbekistan and to foster long-term academic relations with the five Uzbek institutions chosen by the Department of State and who are represented in this week鈥檚 visits.
The five academics, each the leader of his institution, arrived on Monday, Jan. 17, and four of them will return to Uzbekistan on Saturday. The fifth, Ashirbek K. Muminov, chair of the Department of Islamic Studies at the Tashkent State University of Oriental Studies, will remain at the 91探花for three months of work.
The other four are Abdulkhay Abdullayev, vice rector of Tashkent Islamic University; Bakhrom Abdukhalimov, director of the Al-Beruni Institute of Oriental Studies of the Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences; Dilorom Alimova, director of the Institute of History of the Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences; and Abdukayum Azimov, rector of the Al-Bukhari Islamic Institute.
All five are scheduled to meet with 91探花President Mark Emmert on Friday to sign an understanding of cooperation between the five instititions and the UW.
Principal Investigator for the grant is Michael Williams, chairman of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilization (NELC), and he is joined by Stephen E. Hanson, director of the Ellison Center for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies (REECAS) in the Jackson School and Ilse D. Cirtautas, director of NELC鈥檚 Central Aian Language and Literature program. Under the grant, one scholar from each of the five participating institutions spends three months working at the 91探花each year. Additionally, the 91探花is supporting several activities in Uzbekistan, Hawkins said, including developing curricula and writing new college-level texts for the study of comparative religion.