The 25th anniversary meeting for the Latvian and Lithuanian Scholarship Program was held last night in Bowman Hall. Guest speaker, Herbert Hochhauser is a retired professor and discussed his first experiences with the program. Hochhauser taught from 196

Credit: Adria Barbour

The brightly colored European Union flag, Latvian flag and Lithuanian flag lit up room 102 of Bowman Hall for the 25th anniversary meeting of the Latvian and Lithuanian Scholarship Program.

Kristaps Daukss and Edvards Lauge created a Web site for the university Latvian Studies program. Both students are recipients of a scholarship from the Latvian Scholarship fund, said Timothy Moore, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

The project was assigned to the students by Vilmars Kukainis, president of the Kent State University Latvian Community, Daukss said. As recipients of the scholarship, they were required to speak the Latvian language, participate in Latvian activities, have a minimum 2.8 GPA and complete an annual project related to Latvian studies.

“When he presented us with what we had to do, it was just logical,” Lauge said. “We are familiar with HTML, and we have valuable skills.”

The Web site features the Latvian program’s history, the list of previous Latvian Scholarship recipients, the history of the country of Latvia and links, summaries and pictures of Latvian organizations, said Daukss. The links, however, only concern themselves with businesses, churches and organizations within the city of Cleveland.

Both students began working on the Web site at the beginning of their sophomore year, Daukss said. David Brenner, the former director of the Latvian Studies program, introduced them to a graduate student who helped them set up the program. The students used educational versions of Dreamweaver and WS FTP Pro from the University Bookstore to create the Web site.

The server was provided by the university, but there is still no link to it from the university’s Web site, Lauge said.

The Web site is still in its revision phase, Daukss said; however, in the future, they might not be the only ones working on the site.

“Once we graduate, it’ll get passed on to the next batch of students,” he said.

Contact student affairs reporter Adria Barbour at [email protected].