Between the fall of 2017 and spring of 2018, Dan Rodkin, our Associate Vice President of Student Affairs, traveled to both Ukraine and Russia. His first trip was sponsored by the U.S. Department of State as part of its Community College Administrator program. The second trip was a Fulbright opportunity.
He left with the missions of opening up the world for more students and of talking about the importance of academic integrity. He returned with a rich collection of impressions and experiences, which he shares in this episode with our host, Dr. Vilma Fuentes.
Between the fall of 2017 and spring of 2018, Dan Rodkin, our Associate Vice President of Student Affairs, traveled to both Ukraine and Russia. His first trip was sponsored by the U.S. Department of State as part of its Community College Administrator program. The second trip was a Fulbright opportunity.
He left with the missions of opening up the world for more students and of talking about the importance of academic integrity. He returned with a rich collection of impressions and experiences, which he shares in this episode with our host, Dr. Vilma Fuentes.
Welcome to Santa Fe college. This is Vilma[inaudible]. Thank you for joining us for our podcast on developing global citizens. Today we're joined by a very special guest, dr Dan Rodkin, associate vice president for student affairs. And Dan had some really interesting stories to share with us. Um, he had the unique opportunity to travel to both Ukraine and Russia between September, 2017 and April, 2018 all oncology related business. Um, and so he's here to share some of his experiences and impressions with us. So thanks for joining us, Dan.
Speaker 2:Thanks bill. I'm, I'm excited to be here and honored to have the chance to talk about these global travels.
Speaker 1:So why did you go to Russia and Ukraine in the span of 12 months?
Speaker 2:It was a, uh, an opportunity that came out of nowhere and I was excited about the opportunity to just to try something different. I had a, the, the opportunity with Ukraine, it came about with a grant that we had the Stanhope a college applied for, with an institution in Ukraine that was going to be about providing professional development in the areas of the college. Uh, the us community college model and areas of academic integrity to community college directors in Russia and Ukraine. And because that's part of what I do here at Santa Fe and that's my background educationally as studying our system. I was given the opportunity to represent our institution and attend.
Speaker 1:So that was the community college administrator program with Ukraine, sponsored by the us department of state. Exactly. Great. And then Russia
Speaker 2:and then Russia came about as part of the Fulbright program. Fulbright does a community college administrator seminar every year in Russia where they provide an opportunity for five or six community college administrators from the U S to spend two weeks in Russia learning about their college system, creating contacts and networks and getting to know a little bit about the Russian culture and sharing information about the U S culture with our colleagues there.
Speaker 1:So what's interesting is that your engagement with these two countries, um, occurred in large part because of funding that was provided by the us department of state. But it happened at a really unique moment in, uh, the relationship between Ukraine, Russia, and the United States. So in 2014, a a war erupted in the Eastern part of Ukraine, a war that was a partly being fought by Russian backed separatists. And shortly thereafter, Russia occupied Crimea and, uh, Ukraine's a Russian pack president Viktor Yanukovych fled the country and left to Ukraine, I'm sorry, to Russia and the United States, um, relationship with Russia has been a little bit on the rocks in the last few years as it's, uh, the United States government has tried showing its strong commitment, um, to Ukraine and, and Ukraine's thirst for independence and freedom. So, um, putting it into that context, tell us about your experience traveling to both of these countries. Um, or as an American from Florida. How, eh, how did people see you? How did they react to you? What were your thoughts about Ukraine and Russia?
Speaker 2:Well, I certainly wondered when I arrived in Russia just a few months after leaving Ukraine. If the customs, the border patrol agent in Russia would allow, actually let me in the country sing with the stamps. But there was no issue or concern about that. When I went to Ukraine, there was a lot of talk and interest in the, uh, the issue, uh, in the fighting and the war that was going on in the East, uh, in the East of the country. Uh, we didn't see any of it in camera. Poltava are the two cities now that I was visiting, but it was certainly part of the, this ICOs part of the conversation. It was on people's minds. Um, equally present in a, especially in Kia of was the recent, uh, revolution where the youth rebelled and had a kind of an economic revolution that led to overthrowing their, uh, president. That was a big part of the conversation. There was a lot of information out about that. Even though it had been a couple of years since the revolution. U S a relationship with Ukraine was very strong when we were there and there was a lot of enthusiasm and support for us, us institutions, um, the entire time we were there. That was definitely an ongoing, um, a very positive part of my visits. It's the students that I've met with in Ukraine were very intrigued about the United States, were very interested in how can they come to the U S they wanted to know more about it. They saw us as a partner and we're grateful for our country's support of their country during this time when they were moving towards democracy and towards the West of the EU versus going towards Russia. In Russia. Obviously it's a little different situation because our countries were not on the best relationship. And even while I was there, the, uh, during our visit, uh, is when the us embassy in st Petersburg was closed and Russia expelled a large number of our diplomats. And that happened while we were in Russia and a couple of us one morning at breakfast said, so does this change? Do you think about our visit? And we didn't know. We are half wondering if someone was going to come to us and one of ours and tell us that we're being expelled as well. Um, in the end, there was no issues at all. We were able to continue our trip. Um, and the, the students that we spoke with were equally intrigued about the U S uh, they were studying English in school, had done so since high school. These are the Russians. The Russian students were, had been studying English for many years. They were very interested in, again, in the U S they saw it as something that they, when, um, they, you all grew up after, after the USSR broke up. They didn't know the Soviet times in their minds, us was never an evil empire, but something, something they want to know more about. And so despite the political differences, our countries had, the university students and the college students in Russia were intrigued by the U S and saw the West as an opportunity, not an enemy. Uh, we certainly saw from the faculty and staff in Russia, they have longer memories, but they also were said were they saw this as academics and with similar interest in working together to provide educational systems to learn from one another, the pilot, the political differences between our countries. Did it matter when we're sitting in a classroom and talking about best practices and teaching and learning. That was the key piece, not political differences between Moscow and Washington DC.
Speaker 1:So I'm curious if we just think for a minute about the college and university students who interacted with, um, whatever impression, uh, or, or maybe misperception they may have had about Americans. How did they acquire that? Um, what is it that they knew? How did they know it or were they like a blank slate?
Speaker 2:They had a great deal of information about America because of Western media. They watch shows on Netflix, they watch shows on Amazon prime. Um, YouTube works just fine in Russia and in Ukraine. And so there's access to a whole lot of Western media, music, film, TV. It's all part of the just general, um, information conservation in these countries. Uh, now certainly that is a somewhat skewed perspective of our country. Um, but it's the lens in which they had, and so they could talk about pop culture references V uh, very well because it's what they've seen. And so we were able to have conversations sometimes about specific movies or TV shows, um, musical artists because that's what they knew. And so they were able to have conversations about that and they understood that part of our country. The things they necessarily didn't know was about how our politics works. Um, and while we didn't spend a whole lot of time on politics as we were trying to avoid conversations that could go into a, a negative area, they were intrigued a little bit about how some of the freedoms of, of speech though the freedoms of the press, how people could critique in a very public way. And what kind of, um, kind of a lack of fear that journalists had when voicing opposition to the government. Um, whoever may be empowered, um, areas that they perhaps did not have the same freedom to do.
Speaker 1:Do you think they understood our higher education system?
Speaker 2:I think they understood our higher education system in that there is, there's a lot of similarities between them. Both Russia and Ukraine have a system called[inaudible], which is their version of a community college. It's the last two years of high school plus the community college where they're 15 to 19 year olds, earned a high school diploma and a tactical certificate, um, in the same amount of time. Uh, that's a very similar to ours, the community college on the career typically, uh, career and technical education side. And there's a lot of demo, a lot of similarities between the curriculum, between our, uh, the U S career technical education programs and the community college system and both Ukraine and Russia, technical terms there are, are very similar to our universities in bachelors and then advanced degrees as well. So in that way they could see the similarities. They don't have the same type of transferability that we do in our institutions. Their institutions tend to be much smaller and smaller and much more focused on specific programs versus ours are far larger. Um, a couple of students talked about, they started in a program as a 15 year old and after the first year it didn't want to finish it, but did not have the option of transferring. They were there in that program. They received funding for that program. And so they had to finish that program or drop out completely, which was not an option for them. And so they really appreciated the fact that you could easily transfer from one to the other in the U S it was an area that they just did it comprehend the funding model is based on the major. And so when students receive funding for an institution, they receive it to study a specific field. And while the student has the choice on what field to go into, once they received that funding, they are locked into it. And so to switch from one to another, uh, not only do they have to leave the institution, but they also lose the funding stream. And, um, the lack of that national funding for higher education really would be a detriment to their ability to finish.
Speaker 1:So again, I'm, I'm particularly struck by the fact that you visited these two countries at such a, an interesting period of time when relation certainly between Russia and the United States were at an all time low. Many people were saying, Oh, we're just seeing the new cold war starting again. Um, a, what did you, were you apprehensive when you, when were you scared and, and is there anything you saw that you didn't expect?
Speaker 2:So going into two countries where I did not speak the language at all and uh, was certainly a bit of a concern. Um, I was assured by the folks at the Fulbright in Russia that I would be accompanied all the time by someone in a positive way, not sacred place watching me, but it'd be someone from the Fulbright program. Uh, so that made me feel a little better. Uh, but I was still a little apprehensive cause it is a bit of the unknown. I think going into Ukraine a few months earlier made me feel a little more comfortable, cause high to speak the language they are either. But uh, it's amazing how much you can figure out and how nonverbal communication really matters. I learned in Ukraine how to just from a few gestures, um, be able to communicate with someone who may be, uh, a, a shop owner and wanting to buy something. And I was able to indicate what I wanted and they could show me how much it costs and we were able to pay, even though I didn't speak as much besides saying thank you when with the process was finished. Uh, so that was an interesting piece. And then I think growing up, um, I grew up of course during the cold war days. And so Russia was this evil empire concept, this monolithic idea. And so going there and seeing how incredibly diverse the community was blew me away because it was not something I expected. Um, Russia of course is a huge country. I learned there's 160 ethnicities in the country and once you get East pass to Moscow, you're into this very diverse dispersed country with small populations, clustered in small cities. And there's not a lot of folks there who are specifically Russian. They come from a variety of backgrounds and their small populations and they have rich culture, they have unique language, food, dress history. And that was just not at all what I expected. And so the chance to appreciate their, the diverse culture of within Russia was, was phenomenal. And they're very proud of their culture. They like to, these people I met with, they, they want to share their culture, talk about it, much like subpopulations and cultures in the U S like to share our cultures. And so that was a, a really neat to experience that for some reason, despite knowing how diverse the U S was, I was not expecting that in Russia. And looking back, looking back, it was pretty silly of me not to expect that. Uh, but that was a really wonderful, unexpected experience. So just to better understand you, what cities in Russia did you visit? Sure. Uh, we started to Moscow and then we went over to[inaudible], which is a city, uh, that you could say it's probably between, from Florida to Houston if you were to equate the distance. So in us it'd be halfway across the country. In Russia, it's not even a fourth of the way over. We flew to Amazon and then we took a, a van to a city called OSHA or Ola, which is about an hour or two hours away. And then we actually took it overnight train back to Moscow where we finished our visit. And of course, the overnight train is a very classic way of traveling in Russia now as itself, a wonderful cultural experience. Something we don't do enough of here in the U S so tell me about the train ride. The train ride was great. So we were, we were in that, the deluxe accommodations. So you're the first class accommodations, which were wonderful. So perhaps our experience wasn't a pure Russian experience, but, uh, it's nice, nice individual room. There were two people in our room. So I was housed with one of my colleagues from the college in North Carolina, and we had four rooms, uh, lined lined in a row you get on at about 5:00 PM, they serve you dinner. Um, we celebrated with a very traditional Moscow beverage, a Russian beverage, um, after dinner when you wake up in the morning, they serve breakfast and then we land. We planted, we Rove, we arrived at the, uh, terminal in Moscow about, uh, seven o'clock in the morning and Justin time to go to the hotel, freshen up, and then get on with our day. And so, uh, just a neat experience to see how other parts of the world travel. Where are you able to visit red square, the Kremlin? We worked, the hotel in Moscow we stayed at was actually across the street from red square. We were able to see the red square, uh, the, the beautiful, uh, cathedral right there from, um, our hotel and walked around it. And it was, it was just magnificent to see, um, how Moscow is now in these incredible lad marks where right. There was just an unreal. So you just mentioned cathedral. Were you able to visit any cathedrals, either Russian Orthodox churches or other churches during your time there? We did. We had a chance to visit several of the Russian Orthodox churches and they are absolutely magnificent. Um, and Ukrainian, we visited several of the Orthodox churches or the Ukraine, and equally just magnificent and ornate. One of the most interesting parts from the religious perspective is in Cazan, um, on is the heart of, um, the, we used to be called Tarcher stand, which was a region of Russia where there's a large percentage of the tar to our population, about half of the population, because on our tar tars, about half our are Russian and talk tars are, um, there's an ethnic group, but they are, they are a Muslim population and within their Kremlin, which is a, the Russian world for castle, and it's the central part of the, of the city within, because on Kremlin is an incredibly beautiful, ornate mosque, right next to a beautiful ordinate Russian Orthodox church. They literally are 20 feet from one another. And it's a neat way of seeing these two major religions in the country, uh, next to each other in the, uh, inside the Kremlin, the center of the, of the city. And it's, uh, that particular mosque had been destroyed in the location. It was, had been destroyed, uh, about a hundred years ago. And just in the last 10 years, the city government of[inaudible] raise money to build this mosque, eh, uh, on the spot where it had been destroyed years ago, um, during your way above anti Islam issues in Russia. So kind of a neat way of, I thought of cars on saying, this is who our city is and we're going to go ahead and provide this opportunity for our two main religions to coexist peacefully. And, uh, that was a really neat to deed experience to see those two facilities next to each other. So I know historically, um, Russians have often called, uh, Ukrainians or Ukraine little Russian. Um, and from an outsider's perspective, it may seem like they're really similar people, right? Don't they both eat bores, lots of cabbage. Um, but help us understand, you know, is there a difference between Ukrainians and Russians and what is it? What are some of the things that stood out to you? Sure. I would say that there's, there's similarities just like you would want, because here there are similarities between, uh, Germans and Austrians. Uh, they are close to each other geographically, but there are subtle differences in the culture and the background. Certainly the language, Russian and Ukrainian are different languages. They are, they have some similar words and the alphabet is the Cyrillic alphabet, but they are indeed different languages. The religion is a different religion. Ukrainian Orthodox and Russian Orthodox are at different aspects of the Orthodox church. Just like the Baptist and Episcopalians are different. That's a different type of it. And to equate them together would be unfair to both populations. I say there's lots of differences in, uh, when you go back hundreds of years, there were completely separate routes. The Russian people going all the way to all the way to the Pacific ocean. You know, it's a vast area. Uh, Ukraine is a, uh, more European focused area that's, uh, at a training in nature. There's aspects of the, the black sea, um, it's a different culture in that area as well. Um, and of course Ukraine has several borders with other countries in the EU, and so their perspective is more Western European focused, whereas Russia goes from all, you know, it's so large. It's a far more diverse, um, environment. And so, um, I certainly understand perhaps the reason why Russia wants access to Ukrainian and wants to see them as part of their, their sphere of influence politically. But I think when you look at the individuals, I think it's important to look at individual self determination and just like, um, individuals in any space should have the right to decide where they want to be and who they want to be aligned with, uh, to take that out, that right away from the Ukrainian people or any person. Um, it's just wrong. So how did these two back to back international experiences impact you? Yeah, so I spent a lot of time while I was there, of course focusing on educational environments and what made an education environment work, what was good, what was bad. And I was able to easily spend some time thinking about the differences between what I saw. Uh, the, over the last 10 years, Russia has spent an incredible amount of money improving their education system. They moved higher education from the ministry of education to the ministry of higher education in science. It's focuses on STEM. They've improved their facilities, their, their curriculum. They've done a heck of a lot to really, really push their higher education. And it shows this is a population that is a shrinking population. They're expecting a Russia's population to fall considerably over the next 20 years. And so the persons that they have in their country, they need them to be, um, educated and able to, uh, to, to succeed in a global economy. And so they be able to pour funds into their school to get them in their, in their universities and their practicums to get their population to where they need them. From an economic perspective, uh, Ukraine does not have access to those same resources, uh, with the war going on, um, with, uh, not being members of the European union or they're kind of in this, this almost like a purgatory between the two spheres of influence. And so they'd simply have not had the ability to put the resources into their education system the way Russia has in seeing the two, one after another, really giving the opportunity to that comparison. Um, it's, it's an area that you, when you go to Ukraine, as I did first, I didn't realize the areas they were missing until I went to Russia and I saw that what they didn't have as far as I was. Maybe that's just how stings were in Europe. Um, and then seeing the difference in how advanced the, the Russian education model was and how much closer it is to what we're doing here in the U S uh, I was able to see these are areas that you can really needs to, uh, to be able to improve to keep up[inaudible].
Speaker 1:But in addition to the impact these travels had on you professionally and maybe intellectually, um, did it impact you as an individual in any way? Like your perceptions of the world or the way maybe you interact with others? Yeah,
Speaker 2:my first thought was that students are students wherever they are. In talking to the Ukrainian students, I was just struck at how I could have been having a dialogue with students at Santa Fe that while we may have grown up in different educational models, different cultures, we obviously speak different languages. I don't speak Ukrainian. Um, it was a wonderful experience to sit there and have this, this, uh, strong educational dialogue about some really complex issues. And they were engaged. They were challenging the process. They were asking good questions. When I threw questions back at them, they came up with good, strong answers with good sound reasoning, um, which is what I would expect from some of our students that I interact with here at Santa Fe college. And so that was just phenomenal to see that they were the same regardless. And then they weren't in the classroom. They were playing on social media and they were talking about activities for the weekend and how they were going to get together and plans to travel again, the same concepts that our students have in the same interactions. Uh, that same experience happened in Russia. They weren't necessarily as fast to challenge authority, uh, but they had great questions. They were fully engaged. Um, they were as interested in the tech, the technical side of the conversation and what was going on in the social media as we might have. And, uh, there's actually several that are in engaged. We're talking about social media. Several of the students that I met in Ukraine, I've continued to interact with them via social media and it's been a nice way to keep that connection going and to have a sense of what's happening and share the dialogue and information, even though we're obviously in separate countries.
Speaker 1:So you've mentioned students, um, a critic might say, Oh, so Dan got to travel, right? He got the, these two super cool travel opportunities. So what, how does it impact us? How does it impact the college? How does it impact our students? How would you respond to these kinds of criticisms or questionings? I would say, thanks for asking.
Speaker 2:As a, as a student affairs guy, as I was thinking while I was there, is as much as I'm going to learn of this trip to Ukraine, if I can't get our students involved in it, what are we, what are we really accomplishing? So my purpose of going again was to talk a lot about academic integrity. So upon returning to the U S I was able to connect some of our Santa Fe college students, some of our student leaders with the student leaders at the, that hosted us in Poltava, Ukraine. And they spent much of that next year doing Skype conversations with the two groups together to talk about areas of interest and areas where they were trying to understand how we work together and what they can learn from one another. And so as a direct result of my going there and meeting these students, we were connecting with our students here at Santa Fe. And then a year later we were able to get another grant from the U S embassy Kiev. And we spent a whole year engaged in the conversations, a Skype conversations with a class in Poltava. And then three, four of our students were able to go back. We're able to go over to Ukraine, uh, to visit Kiev and Poltava and spend four days in Poltava in the city, uh, that I visited to work on specifically areas of, of, of access and inclusion, um, anti bullying type initiatives. And then a couple of weeks after that trip, the colleagues from Ukraine came to the U S along with two of their students and they spent a full week here in Florida. And so we provided opportunities for students to meet their counterparts and to learn from each other in person, in both countries and via technology. That's why I went perhaps more than anything else, was to begin a process that would allow our students to talk to one another and to have a better global understanding of, of how these areas that we are countries and what we do to and how we can interact together. And I'll just add as my own personal observation is even for the, you know, so many other Santa Fe students who were not able to travel to Ukraine, they nevertheless were able to, um, interact with students from their, either virtually or received the ones that came or simply hear your stories in presentations. Cause I know that you did have that, but, and then with Russia, I think, uh, what did you do? They, are you able to like bridge anything? It was a, it was a bit more of a challenge in Russia, but one of the main areas that were able to make some progress on is one of the schools we visited in Cassan was a, um, an Academy that focused on, on sports and athletics. And they were very interested in learning a little more about how the U S um, collegiate athletic programs trained their student athletes and how the coaches acquired knowledge and how they worked with their student athletes. And so we were able to set up a conversation with, um, our Santa Fe college baseball, volleyball and women's basketball teams to have a Skype conversation with the colleges, uh, with, with the, this one institutions, coaches and, and, uh, professors and administrators in[inaudible]. And so we had one really good exchange and then the coaches continue the dialogue. And eventually I'd say that the women's basketball team brought in a couple of their student athletes to talk with student women basketball players in Russia. And again, that's the conversation that I don't think a a student comes to Santa Fe college expecting to play basketball here, never believes that they're going to have an opportunity to sit down one day and talk to someone in Russia who's playing basketball. That's not why they come here. But when we present that opportunity, that's what changes minds, changes perceptions. And so I'm very glad that we were able to accomplish that one piece of student to student interaction.
Speaker 1:So given the fact that you traveled to Russia on a program sponsored by the us department of state, and that at least part of the interactions that you had with Ukrainians was thanks to a separate department of state program a and thank you for paying your tax. And by the way, absolutely our pleasure. And as specifically it was through the Bureau of educational and cultural affairs, right? That that was the Bureau that funded these. Um, do you think your traveled to these two countries and, and you're receiving people from these countries, uh, in any way helped improve our, uh, the United States relationship with the unit, uh, with Russia and Ukraine.
Speaker 2:You know, I don't know if it made a difference at the policy making level, um, immediately, but the, the faculty of staff that we, that I interacted with that have now a better understanding and I hope a more positive understanding of the U S that made a difference in their community and some perhaps the students that we involved interacted with that made a difference for them. And in five or 10 years when those students are now professionals, they're going to be considering the relationship difference. One of those students goes into politics. Who knows when one of those students might become an actor and get elected to, to a high level office in Ukraine or, or in Russia. But that's the opportunity is you plant the seeds and you have to give time for them to grow. It's not necessarily an immediate return on that investment, but it's about, it's about the long game
Speaker 1:and you think are our students,
Speaker 2:it definitely impacted our students. They had no idea about Ukraine and Russia until they had the opportunity to interact with their counterparts. And it, it helped them understand something about an area that perhaps they, maybe they heard about it on the news. Maybe they read about it in social media, but they weren't thinking about it. And considering it now they're following people in other, in another country on social media. They're talking regularly of to them about what they see going on in the world. It changed their life.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for paving the way for, um, your willingness to travel to two countries. That may be to some Americans may have been a little bit scary, especially at this point in time. And then for, um, creating the opportunities for our students to become a more global citizens. It's my pleasure.