9:01 a.m., April 28, 2010----While their areas of academic interest may vary, Junior Faculty Development Program visiting scholars Sagita Mirjam Sunara, of Croatia and Artak Manukyan, of Armenia, both believe that their experience at the University of Delaware will provide them with a world of new ideas to take back to their respective countries and universities.

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Sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, the Junior Faculty Development Program (JFDP) affords educators from Eurasia and Southeastern Europe an opportunity to experience the American academic environment.

The program also gives American scholars at host universities like UD the opportunity to learn more about education in regions of the world whose educational systems are very different than those in the U.S.

Sunara, of Split, Croatia, whose academic areas of interest include the fine arts conservation and the history of conservation, is serving as a senior assistant lecturer in the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation at the Winterthur Museum and Country Estate in Wilmington, in addition to activities on the UD campus. Host professors for Sunara are Joyce Hill Stoner, Edward F. and Elizabeth Goodman Rosenberg Professor of Material Culture, and Vicki Cassman, assistant professor of art conservation.

What attracted Sunara to UD was the international reputation of its art conservation program and faculty, and an article by Stoner, which Sunara said helped to inspire her research dissertation. “Another reason was that the University of Delaware is the only school in North America to offer a doctoral degree in art conservation. My home university is working on establishing the first doctoral program in art conservation in Croatia.”

“Since arriving at UD in January, I have been trying to observe how UD structures its academic and research programs,” Sunara said. “I have been publishing articles on this topic in the newsletter of the University of Split, Universitas. There is so much we can learn from each other.”

Besides teaching, research and restoration efforts at UD, Sunara also had the opportunity to sit in on the admission process for master's degree candidates for the University's art conservation program, and the interviews for the doctor's degree candidates.

“The interviews for the masters program require drawing, including still life drawing, a science test, a chemistry test, a demonstration of writing skills. Most applicants also have at least 1,000 hours of conservation experience,” Stoner said. “We have about 400 candidates at first, and when we tell them that what we are offering requires something like a triple major in chemistry, art history/archaeology and studio art, the list of applicants usually drops to about 80 individuals.”

Besides observing graduate study courses and occasional co-teaching master's level students, Sunara has been busy collecting information on conservation and teaching materials to scan and email to colleagues at the University of Split, the University of Dubrovnik, the Croatian Conservation Institute and the Art Gallery in Split. She has also donated books on conservation of Croatian art and artifacts to the program.

“Last month I was asked to create a syllabus for a new course that will be introduced to my home university. I saw this as a perfect opportunity to implement the knowledge I have gained here,” Sunara said. “With the help and advice of several colleagues, Prof. Stoner included, I devised a syllabus for a course on conservation documentation and research. In a way, I think this can be seen as a start of collaboration between the two universities. Croatia is a country of rich cultural heritage. I hope that in future we will start an American-Croatian conservation project and establish student and faculty exchange.”

Among the things that Sunara enjoyed most about her visit to the US were the trips to Colonial Williamsburg and Pittsburgh. She visited museums in Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York and in Boston, and gave a lecture at the Conservation Center of the University of New York.

“I have learned so much in these past few months, but I think this experience has been a mutual gain,” Sagita said. “My American colleagues might be interested in how their conservation and teaching practices are perceived. I have built many professional and personal contacts, and one of the students will be visiting me in Croatia this summer, which I find very exciting.”

Manukyan, a native of Yerevan, Armenia, and a visiting scholar in UD's Department of Economics, has concentrated his research efforts on economics, including public sector economics, tourism, strategic management, and international business.

Working with Saul Hoffman, chairperson of the Department of Economics, and Jeffrey Miller, professor of economics, Manukyan hopes to take his UD experience and help the Armenian transformation as it shifts from a centrally planned economy to a market economy.

“About 70 percent of all research and development in higher education around the world exists in the United States,” Manukyan said. “We used to learn from Russian textbooks, and of course with a free market economy, everything has changed. My goal is to fill the gap in knowledge between the old and the new systems.”

Manukyan earned his doctorate in economics from the Economic Research Institute in Yerevan in 2002, with his dissertation on “Prospects in the Development of the Insurance Industry in the Republic of Armenia.”

He also has served as a consultant for international organizations such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, and was a visiting scholar at the department of Finance and Economics at Potsdam University in Germany and the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. Currently Manukyan is an instructor at a leading Armenian university, the Armenian State University of Economics, Gyumri Branch.

“I want to refresh our textbook materials and make them more diverse,” Manukyan said. “We used to focus on the same issues, but time goes faster today, and we need to get this power of teaching material to our students.”

To build on this collaboration of curriculum development and research projects, Manukyan envisions a cultural exchange effort between universities in Armenia and the United States.

“The next step could be an exchange of Armenian and American students and professors,” Manukyan said. “This globalization would include refreshing some educational approaches and implementing new ones, including holding conferences with collaborating institutions via the Internet.”

One of the more immediate challenges, Manukyan said, is taking the educational materials that are available in English, through programs like Sakai, and incorporating them into Armenian classrooms.

“Currently I am teaching university classes using an English textbook,” Manukyan said. “Our students in Armenia also are anxious to hear these things in class, but this is more of a challenge because of the gap between educational systems in Central, Eastern and Eurasian nations and the West, including the United States.”

Manukyan noted that due to its location at the crossroads of Asian and European cultures, and its strong educational heritage, Armenia is competitive in the region and hosts many international students, mainly from Iran and India. The number of international students will be higher when Armenia adopts the best educational practices available in Western Europe and the United Sates, Manukyan said.

“Both government and nongovernmental actors are working on creating a sustainable and knowledge-based economy” Manukyan said. “They are building a new campus community that is scheduled to be completed in 2012.”

One of the key differences between the University of Delaware and the universities in Armenia, Manukyan said, is the size, scale and quality of the institutions and the scope of innovations.

“The University of Delaware is basically a state within a state. You even have your own stadiums and the campus is spread over a very large area,” Manukyan said. “When you compare UD with our Armenian State University of Economics in Yerevan, you would find that we have just a few buildings, and they are not spread out like here at UD.”

Hoffman said the goal of the Junior Faculty Development Program is for visiting scholars to return to their respective countries and universities and become educational innovators and leaders.

“We hope there will be an ongoing relationship between our two counties,” Hoffman said. “We have a history in the Economics Department of hosting JFPD scholars, and we believe the experience has been successful for both sides.”

Miller said Manukyan is the latest in a series of JFDP fellows that had previously come from Croatia, Montenegro and Uzbekistan.

“We have enjoyed the interaction with the fellows, and we learn a great deal from them,” Miller said. “We have been able to stay in contact with several of the previous fellows, and hope to do the same with Artak.”

When not mentoring, teaching or lecturing, Manukyan said he enjoys watching NBA basketball, soccer, wrestling and his favorite sport, chess.

Currently the mentor for the UD club chess team, Manukyan holds practices each Friday afternoon, drawing on his experience from years of competing in Armenia. Under his tutelage, the UD chess team achieved a career best and is currently ranked tops in the state.

Having won the University of Maryland Baltimore County Open/Alvin S. Mintzes Chess tournament in February, Manukyan is currently the top ranked player residing in the First State. He hosted a chess challenge at UD on April 23 that raised money to assist relief efforts in Haiti.

“Chess is part of our Armenian cultural heritage, and I have been playing it since an early age,” Manukyan said. “I also like to socialize, because it is an opportunity to network and meet people and learn new ideas through a common language that everyone can speak.”

Article by Jerry Rhodes
Photos by Evan Krape