The Russians Are Coming — And For NOVA, That’s a Good Thing

Mikey Jay — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 19:47:22 +0000

By Michael C. Jordan
The Russians are coming to the United States – but, unlike in the Red Scare years, this time, it’s a good thing. The prestigious Fulbright Program recently formed an agreement between Ivanovo State Power Engineering University (ISPEU) and Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) in an effort to open the door to cooperation and spark student interaction.
This cross-cultural promise means that both schools will equip students in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Geospatial Technologies (GST) programs with distance learning tools for joint projects. According to Dr. Beverly Blois, who helped engineer the agreement during his how experience on a Fulbright grant last year, it seeks to create an educational bridge to which students from both countries can pass.
“[It was] a great success.” Dr. Beverly Blois said. “This program could be a model for future collaborations within Fulbright Russia.”
This recent agreement, however, is part of a much longer history of America building ties with other countries. The Fulbright Program, which was introduced to Congress by Senator J. William Fulbright in 1945, is a program whose overarching goal has been to create mutual relationships between the United States and other countries around the world.
Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev’s Bilateral Presidential Commission recently began its Fulbright Russia Program’s Community College Initiative, in order to create relationships between Russian and US colleges. In December, 2009, Fulbright held a community college administrator conference in Moscow, which hosted delegates from the US and Russia. The American community college model “resonated both at the conference and during visits to universities and colleges in Moscow as well as throughout Russia’s regions,” according to the Fulbright Program in Russia’s website.
The most recent of these international exchanges has been between Ivanovo State Power Engineering University, Northern Virginia Community College, and partner institutions like George Mason University. Monday, November 22, 2010 there was a significant meeting between NOVA, ISPEU, GMU, Fairfax County Office of Public Affairs and the State Department. The meeting’s purpose was to sign a Memorandum of Understanding between ISPEU and NOVA, most importantly, collaborating in the field of Geographic Information Systems and Geospatial Technologies.
At the meeting there were important officials from both colleges, most notably: Dr. Vladimir Tutikov, Vice President of ISPEU, Dr. Robert Templin, President of NOVA, and Dr. Beverly Blois, Dean of Humanities Division at NOVA’s Loudon Campus. Also in attendance was Dr. Sergei Andronikov, Director of Russian Initiatives at George Mason University. This groundbreaking meeting ended with a congenial understanding and a hopeful outlook on the future. Both parties seemed to be galvanized with expectancy.
“The mood of the meeting was very upbeat,” stated Janice Ouellette, GCPI Program Coordinator at NOVA, who was present at the meeting. “Many of the people [involved] worked very hard to get both sides to the table,” she added.
The actual agreement mostly addresses the shared instruction of students in GIS and GST. The students are going to share class assignments through technology beginning in 2011. The faculty will also be given a form of communication so that they can produce mutual interests. It also addresses the history of Russia and the US, and a possible exchange of information to the students about the history of both countries. For NOVA, the agreement means that faculty and students, at least in GIS programs, will be able to collaborate on projects via new communication technologies. The agreement calls for the creation of a website to facilitate such distance learning, and a NOVA blackboard account for the ISPEU students and faculty.

Local Economist Sees Bright Spot in Gloomy Economy

Mikey Jay — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 02:38:51 +0000

By Michael C. Jordan

Although the National Bureau of Economic Research dated the end of the late aughts’ recession to be June 2009, high unemployment numbers and increased poverty levels would not let you know it. The last two years have been spent in sluggish economic recovery, departing from the longest recession since the Great Depression.
“We’re in a very slow and fragile recovery.” Dr. Stephen S. Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis and Professor of public policy at George Mason University, said in his opening remarks to his lecture on The 2nd Year of the Recovery: Performance and Outlook, which was held Tuesday, October 19th, at Northern Virginia Community College’s Loudon campus.
Fuller was preaching a different message than many of the doom-and-gloom tales political pundits spun leading up to the recent midterm elections. He spoke straightforwardly and emanated optimism, as well as realism. He enlightened the audience with graphs and numbers that made the recovery perceptible, sharing with us the findings of his organization, and the many factors that contributed to the economic recovery, both regionally and nationally. He began his lecture by trying to reassure those who were worried about the risk of another recession.
“You can’t have a double dip after two quarters,” Fuller said. According to Fuller, the U.S. recession has currently been through five quarters. We seem to be out of the woods. Comparing our latest recession with the past three recessions, our GDP is following the upward trend of the 1991 and 2001 recessions. The early 1980’s recession had a much faster boom because the economy was more global and less manufacturing oriented, Fuller noted.
But despite the growth in our GDP, jobs seem to be at the heart of most Americans, and Professor Fuller covered this thoroughly. The unemployment rate has risen to 9.6% because of several factors. One of the biggest contributing factors to the unemployment rate is the status of the housing market, he said. When people cannot sell their houses, their job search is limited to the locality of their house. Because 75% of the unemployment number is low skilled workers (construction, manufacturing etc.), the housing market determines whether they have projects to work on.
Regionally, however, Fuller noted that the outlook is brighter. Washington and Northern Virginia are not doing quite as badly as other cities. Our unemployment in Washington, DC is 6.2%, which makes Detroit, Miami and Los Angeles’ unemployment rate look daunting. But Fuller downplayed the nearly 10% national unemployment rate, mentioning other governments with much higher unemployment rates.
Dr. Fuller also has a firm stance on the much-debated Obama administration’s intervention: he believes the stimulus was necessary. He compared it to a conduit, which had to be unplugged to allow current. The stimulus, he said, allowed the economy to get moving again. Without it, Dr. Fuller said he believes the country would have suffered from an economic collapse so great that it would have gone in the books likened to the Great Depression. He also gave the previous administration of George W. Bush credit by praising the value of his Troubled Asset Relief Program, which has been reviled by both the left and the right since its birth.
But most of the audience there seemed to be interested in the future. Towards the end of his presentation, Fuller gave us an economic forecast. The Center for Regional Analysis predicts little activity within our recovery. Gradually, they expect that the numbers will look better: unemployment subsiding and GDP slightly climbing. Most of their estimates are flattened out, rather than profound peaks. After 2015, the state of the economy is unknown. When asked about another recession, Fuller said one is inevitable circa 2015 or soon after.
“There needs to be an economic propaganda program,” he said, just before leaving. “People are basing the state of the national economy on what they’re feeling personally… People don’t know that the economy is actually doing well,” Fuller added, essentially summing up his thesis on the economy as it stands now: the recovery is doing fine, but people are not feeling the progress regionally or nationally.