Five delegates from Ukraine visited Kent State on Thursday as part of their Northeast Ohio college tour. Interested in learning more about the American education system, the delegates listened to a panel presentation composed of Kent State faculty and administrators.

Nikki Crutchfield, assistant dean of undergraduate studies, emphasized to the delegation that Kent State is an institution that really focuses on student success.

“We put our students first and that’s one of the reasons why I love our division so much,” Crutchfield said.

Along with the rest of the Kent faculty and administration, Crutchfield answered the delegates’ questions regarding curriculum, university codes of conduct and Destination Kent State.

Moema Furtado, the international partnerships coordinator for the Office of Global Education, hosted the event and led the delegates on a tour of the Kent campus after the panel discussion.

“They wanted to get a better idea of what the American education system is and adapt their own teaching techniques,” Furtado said.

With Ukraine beginning to break cultural ties with Russia, the delegates are interested in learning more about western standards of teaching and education, Furtado said.

Kent State was just one of the delegation’s stopping points in its Library of Congress-funded Open World Program tour of colleges in Northeast Ohio.

Melissa Zwick, the program and communications coordinator for the Council of International Programs USA, administers the Open World program and is coordinating the tour of Northeast Ohio colleges.

Because the Ukrainian delegates are here on behalf of a Library of Congress program, they were required to meet a member of Congress, Zwick said. She said they spent their first two days in Washington, D.C., where the delegates were able to meet State Director John Ryan, who works for Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown.

“So far they’ve been to Cleveland State University, Case Western and Oberlin College,” Zwick said.

The five Ukrainian delegates included Natalya Bibik, a professor from O.M. Beketov National University of Urban Economy; Viktoriya Hrytsenko, an English language teacher from Poltava National Pedagogical University; Iryna Oliynik, assistant professor from Ternopil Volodymyr Hnatyuk National Pedagogical University; Gennadiy Stavinskiy, post graduate student and teacher at the National Pedagogical Dragomanov University and Lesya Ikalyuk, an assistant professor from Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University.

Contact Kaitlin Siegel at [email protected].