Wednesday, August 29, 2001

U. of Maryland Will Help Uzbekistan Create a Virtual University By MICHAEL ARNONE The University of Maryland at College Park is working with the government of Uzbekistan to create the Central Asian country's first virtual university. A Maryland delegation left for Uzbekistan this week to firm up agreements to establish a Virtual University of Maryland in Uzbekistan. The goal is to use distance-learning techniques to bring an American-style agricultural-extension system to the former Soviet republic. The online university would make existing University of Maryland courses available through distance learning but would also create new courses specifically for Uzbek students, said Don Riley, the university's chief information officer. Uzbekistan's technological infrastructure is undeveloped, Mr. Riley said. Only one university has Internet access and even that is slow by U.S. standards. Initially, the virtual university will distribute courses by CD-ROM and videotape, Mr. Riley said. But the goal is to deliver distance education through the Internet. The trip follows a 10-day excursion that top University of Maryland officials took last June to Russia, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan to strengthen ties between those countries and the university. The Uzbekistan leg of the trip was the most noteworthy because of the strong emphasis the Uzbek government puts on education, said Mr. Riley. The Uzbek president, Islam Karimov, invited the university's president, C.D. Mote, to meet him in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, along with Mr. Riley and Thomas Fretz, dean of the university's College of Agriculture and head of the university's agricultural extension program. "He had a quite clear and passionate commitment to higher education as the future of his country," Mr. Mote said of Mr. Karimov. The University of Maryland has already created bricks-and-mortar agricultural-extension services in three Uzbek cities: Tashkent, Namangan, and Bukhara. "So far, it seems to be very successful," said Mr. Fretz. The goal of the new university is to use distance learning to help educate farmers in Uzbekistan's rural areas. Mr. Fretz said that the new virtual university would not be a profit-making venture. He said the University of Maryland and the Uzbek government are working jointly to find funds to pay for the project, which will have a seven-figure price tag. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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