MSU students may soon be able to set their sights on a country that once laid beyond the iron curtain - Lithuania.
Robert Huggett, MSU vice president of research and graduate studies, joined a group of three faculty members in a tour of the country’s universities last month.
He said he hopes to establish opportunities for students to study abroad in the nation, which was formerly under Communist influence.
“We discovered what appears to be a great interest in collaborating with MSU,” he said. “There are not too many places that you can go and ask people what the Soviet Union was like and what experience they have coming out from under that.”
The group visited universities with a variety of specialties including the Law University of Lithuania, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, the Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astronomy and Lithuania University of Agriculture.
And Huggett said some of these universities have a long tradition in education, dating back to Galileo.
“We sometimes tend to think that some of the larger countries and some ones we know more about, like the U.K., France and Germany, have a lock on the good universities, that is not true,” he said. “We saw some very strong departments.”
Although a study abroad program in Lithuania a few decades ago would have been unlikely, Huggett said now it is very safe.
“I would have absolutely no qualms about sending my own child to study in Lithuania,” he said. “It is a very wonderful atmosphere.”
Chemistry Professor John Frost joined Huggett to determine the skill levels of Lithuanian students in the bio-technology field. Many of these students already work in Scandinavian countries and he said they would work well with MSU students.
“They are very well-trained but lack the research experience,” he said. “You are not dealing with an anti-American feeling that you see elsewhere in the world.”
MSU-Detroit College of Law has already established an affiliation with Vytautas Magnus University School of Law, which was among the group’s stops in Lithuania. Michael Lawrence, associate dean of MSU-DCL, spent two weeks last May teaching there as part of a faculty exchange program.
“I know the dean there was very enthusiastic about their trip,” he said. “Lithuania offers some tremendous bridge building opportunities to eastern Europe and MSU is well poised with their study abroad program.”
Lawrence said DCL will offer a certificate for Lithuanian students who take classes taught by MSU professors. He said the association with an American university will open doors to students over there.
Lithuania offers a mix of old Soviet buildings and medieval nostalgia, Lawrence said.
“It is a beautiful country, the capital city of Vilnius is very much a European city with cobblestone streets and red tile roofs,” he said. “The economics are still difficult
