Background, Creation, and Development of the Ukraine–US Partnership (Presenter A)

• In Event: Ukraine-U.S. University Partnership: A Unique Humanitarian Commitment in War Times

Abstract

Purpose
The story to be relayed concerns the Ukraine–US partnership relative to its context—background, creation, and development—by an insider who has participated from the outset.
Perspectives
In 2022, a Ukrainian professor invited our US School of Education to collaborate on educational research. The US administrators accepted this invitation. They saw the partnership as fitting our outreach mission and goal to further international engagement in scholarship. Through its global land-grant mission, our university applies knowledge to sustainably raise standards of living worldwide, and it has delivered as a key partner on multi-million-dollar projects. We, the US faculty, were pleased to join the partnership.
As to interconnections, the partners are public, land-grant, leading research universities founded as polytechnic institutes with scientific, technological, and educational programming. From the US partner’s viewpoint, the relationship with Ukraine’s university was a compassionate outreach initiative to academics whose lives are deeply distressed by the war. We saw this relationship as a means of sustaining something positive in the lives of Ukrainian colleagues who work under difficult circumstances. The hope is that when peace is finally restored, the US partner will contribute to the rebuilding of academic systems and practices ravaged by war.
Methods/Data Sources
Strategic partnership discussions led to a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). Each university designated a professor as the primary contact. The MOU provides for international outreach exchanges within the scope of such activities as:
a. Examining ways for the parties to benefit from each other’s knowledge and experience by
finding solutions to scholarly problems of mutual interest.
b. Exploring possible collaborations on curriculum development, teaching, and research projects, with involvement from faculty and graduate students.
c. Facilitating the organization of scholarly meetings and exchange of materials.
Results
This MOU allows for flexibility governing academic intercollegiate pursuits and study of linkages (Jacobi, 2018). While the intent was to limit the relationship to our School, it will broaden to other units. The MOU does not allow for travel, which will change once peace returns. Our Ukrainian partner invited in-person engagement early 2024, assuming the war would be over.
Since 2022, our School has been represented by seven faculty, four of whom are in this SIG panel. It was impractical for our Ukrainian counterparts to join us.
Activities also include joint publications and potential funding for a resilience project, a comprehensive program designed to empower educators working in the frontline zone. The aim is to enhance educators’ well-being and capabilities with stress resistance and goal-setting skills, and psychotherapeutic practices.
Scholarly Significance
Presenter A will lay the groundwork for an uplifting dialogue about a unique partnership that is, paradoxically, thriving in a war that has devastated Ukraine but not its spirit (“Russia–Ukraine War,” 2024). This “emerging cross-border” global network is embedded within the governance of universities and overseen by “international relations scholars” (Ansell & Torfing, 2022, p. 7). Structural and symbiotic factors serve as inspiration for an innovative institutional strategy (Jacobi, 2018) connecting overseas parties with different cultures and histories for the first time.

Author

• Carol A. Mullen, Virginia Tech