Academic Extremes

I met with Leo today, the woman with whom I will be teaching English at the University of Prishtina. She said she has been teaching there for 11 years. It's not her full time job. According to her, the university pay is worth peanuts. She's got a full-time gig working for an NGO on the that conducts political science seminars for young local politicians. She tells me that UP has a lot of problems and that the students not only don't speak much English when they enter, but that the university doesn't impose much of a need for them to learn it. Classes are meant to start on October 1. She and I will most likely be taking that first week to test the students and place them into different leveled classes. She wanted to make sure I understood that things would move slowly and be quite unorganized at first and that I would have to be patient. I don't know, sounds a bit like September at Brandeis High School a couple of years back.

Now I must share about the Kosovo Institute of Journalism And Communication (KIJAC). It is a MA program here in Prishtina that is funded my the Royal Norwegean Minestry of Foreign Affairs and is this year partnering with the University of Nebraska's journalism program. Apparently they used to be housed in central Prishtina, but had to moved for some reason. In the drive out there, Wendy, Ardian and I were talking about how I would get myself there and back. As the drive continued to drive toward nothing, our conversation started turning to whether or not I'd go there at all. The closest thing to the building was a cemetary. Everywhere else was wasteland. When we arrived at the building, we were met by a Dutch man that was at least 6' 4" wearing a rainbow-striped shirt with glowing blue eyes and a platinum smile. His name is Willem and his CV covers media work all over the world. He escorted us into the front door and we were transported into this man's rainbow world. Winding staircases, track lighting and walls geometrically painted with colors that must have been inrpired by the shirt. He took us on a tour of the most high tech academic facility I have ever seen. Audio and video editing equipment, classrooms hooked up with video conferencing, LCD projectors and computers for students that I know I never had access to. And this is in KOSOVO?! The professors here consist of a former executive producer of the BBC, journalists from Australia, Norway, the states and they hve worked in Cuba, Vietnam, Venezuela, Etheopia,Spain, Bosnia and God only knows where else. I suggest you check out the link.

Because of the international faculty, the classes are taught in English. For the first time, this year's entering class - 25 students - has 5 serbian students enrolled. Now this is a big deal and something they are very proud of. Their ultimate goal is to be a media center for all of Europe and opening their doors to all kinds is crucial. And I am going to be a part of this! These students need to write an MA thesis in English by the end of their second year, so my job will be to strengthen their academic writing in English. This becomes more important to them having Serbian students in the class because English will serve as the culturally unbiased common language in the classroom.