Student Senate and faculty are helping to further a connection between Ohio University and Ostroh Academy, located in Athens's sister city, Ostroh, Ukraine.
Mayor Steve Patterson visited Ostoh in February with the main goal of building bonds between the cities and institutions of higher education. Since returning to Athens, he said he has connected the two schools’ psychology departments.
Taras Tarasun, a sophomore studying business analytics and management information systems, is originally from Ukraine, growing up only 14 minutes away from the academy. He decided to move to the U.S. two years ago.
Despite the move, he said he managed to maintain close connections with several students who currently attend Ostroh Academy, one of whom is a part of the academy’s student government.
During a presentation to the Senate, Tarasun discussed possibly collaborating with both institutions' student governments.
Tarasun said he and Tetyana Dovbnya – his success adviser in the College of Business, who is also from Ukraine – are working together to try to establish an experiential learning course to educate students on Ukraine, its history, its language and Ostroh Academy.
Dovbnya also attended the Senate meeting in which Tarasun gave his presentation and was applying for a micro-grant to raise funding for resources needed to launch the course.
Although Dovbnya did not receive the grant, she said she was still happy because it prompted her to further develop the idea for the class to become an experiential learning opportunity.
“I need to forget about the (grant) proposal because the proposals are tied to something that is probably more already in place,” Dovbnya said.
The current timeline in which the class may be available to students is unknown, but Dovbnya said the next step in making the potential class come to fruition is to contact individual deans to see which colleges would be willing to house the course.
Dovbnya also said she would continue to develop the curriculum until she can find a permanent category for the class in the university’s class offerings.
“A lot of things are kind of up in the air,” she said. “There are many ideas, but there are also bureaucratic processes that need to be involved to help them along.”
Tarasun said one of the potential ideas for the class would include pairing students in similar majors from each institution to partner on a semester-long project.
He said the partnership could create future student exchanges. Tarasun said he does not think OU has a lot of connections in Eastern Europe, so the collaboration could help build those relationships.
As of 2023, 13 freshmen from the Eastern European region are enrolled at OU.
“We have also professors and other members of staff, and it definitely helps them, in a way, that they can communicate more of its culture and (to) people,” he said.
Dovbnya said creating a partnership between OU and Ostroh Academy could become the cornerstone of Athens’ relationship with the city of Ostroh. She said because education is a consistent path for people, she thinks if the university starts a partnership in Ukraine it has the potential to enhance the city’s current involvement further.
“This exchange of ideas, hopefully, will potentially lead to some collaborative projects and partnerships that will extend beyond like a classroom or beyond the personal engagement of the students,” Dovbnya said.
Tarasun said he believes the collaboration already established between the cities of Athens and Ostroh has been beneficial to connecting the universities and continues to make each partnership easier.
“I would say the fact that Athens has a partnership with Ostroh helps establish this partnership between two universities, too, because we already have a partnership between cities,” he said. “It's much easier to do this in universities, too.”
