ACTC Wins Mellon Grant for Project in Central Asia:
Journey on the Silk Road
June-August 2000 -- ACTC won a $ 15,000 Andrew
W. Mellon travel grant to support its cooperative curriculum development
work with the Aga Khan Humanities Project (AKHP) in Central Asia.
With the awarded funds, an ACTC team of five representatives traveled
to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan to observe the progress
of the new core curriculum being developed by the AKHP in nine former
Soviet universities. The AKHP contributed support for housing, food,
and travel within the region.
The AKHP program, now in its third year, networks nine regional
universities. Its objective is to renovate the region’s outdated,
Soviet-style higher education pedagogy and structure in order to
aid in the development in students of the spirit of pluralistic,
civil societies. ACTC and AKHP have been in collaboration for several
years before this trip. The hoped-for, long-term results will not
only include a further strengthening of the already advanced AKHP
program, but collaborative efforts between AKHP institutions and
ACTC institutions in faculty and student exchanges.
The Project Director for this effort was Scott Lee, Executive Director
of ACTC. Lee wrote the Mellon proposal and selected the team. The
team included: Stephen Zelnick, ACTC President, and Professor of
English and former Director of the Intellectual Heritage Program
at Temple University; Margaret Downes, Director of the Asheville
Institute on General Education and ACTC Board Member, University
of North Carolina at Asheville; Susan Gillespie, Director of the
International Institute on Liberal Education at Bard; and Thomas
Barfield, Chair of the Anthropology Department at Boston University,
a key participant in Boston’s Core Curriculum and an expert on the
region. Lee commented: “This team demonstrates ACTC’s extensive
experience in core, general liberal education programs, as well
as its ability to integrate knowledge of liberal education with
expertise in a wide variety of fields. Each member is eager to learn
from the work being carried forward by the AKHP.”
The visiting team met with government officials, university rectors,
and the large staff of the AKHP project, including many young teachers
engaged in renovating pedagogy on the campuses of the three Central
Asian countries. Program training, pedagogical instruction and assessment,
curricular development, faculty support, and cultural legacies after
Soviet withdrawal, all played a part in the discussions. Zelnick
commented that the region offers artistic and cultural richness
to the rest of the world: “In stories, visual arts, tapestries,
music and dance we can expect an out-flowing of treasures as these
national traditions become part of the global culture we now see
emerging from all over the world.”
The Silk Road was an ancient trade route from China through Central
Asia to the ancient Mediterranean. Now, along this route, the AKHP
hopes to establish a global, liberal education that links the intellectual
heritage of many nations. Under the leadership of Director Rafique
Keshavjee, AKHP helps the region’s universities to construct curricula
that reflect the pluralistic, cultural heritage of Tajiks, Kyrgyz,
and Kazakhs living in these four countries. Groups span the national
borders originally set up during imperial conquests by Russia and
the Soviets, so there is urgency in finding ways of dialogue and
pluralistic nation building. The universities desire to open themselves
to global, higher education, to explore Western pedagogy, and, in
particular, to acquire the practice of open discussion and inquiry
based styles of learning. The foundation for this pedagogy is the
rich Islamic, Eastern, and Western heritage of texts and traditions
which have repeatedly intersected on the Silk Road for over 2000
years.
At the invitation of Keshavjee and Tom Kessinger, former President
of Haverford College and General Manager of the Aga Khan Trust for
Culture, the parent organization of AKHP, Stephen Zelnick, will
be returning to review classroom practices in Spring of 2001.
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