2. Current News and Work in Progress at GLOSAS: Project EDES


Call for Consortium Members
to Participate in the
U.S.-Russia Electronic Distance Education System (EDES)

GLOSAS/USA is acting on a request from the Ministry of Science, Higher Education and Technology Policy of the Russian Federation to jointly establish a U.S.-Russia Electronic Distance Education System (EDES) via various telecommunication media. This project will be conducted by Global University in the U.S.A. (GU/USA) and the Association of International Education (AIE) in Russia. GU/USA and AIE are consortia of educational, governmental, industrial and international organizations.

GU/USA is a divisional activity of GLObal Systems Analysis and Simulation Association in the U.S.A. (GLOSAS/USA) which is a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of global education by electronic means. The Association of International Education (AIE) is led by the Ministry of Science, Higher Education and Technology Policy of the Russian Federation.

The project has already gained wide support of prominent U.S. educational institutions with experience in distance education. You are cordially invited to participate in the consortium. Please contact Dr. Takeshi Utsumi <utsumi@columbia.edu> for further details.


Selected endorsements of EDES

The University of Hawaii (UH) endorses the application of the GLObal Systems Analysis and Simulation Association in the U.S.A. (GLOSAS/USA) for assistance in developing distance education capability with Russia through USIA's NIS University Partnership Program.

Our Curriculum Research & Development Group (CRDG) of the College of Education has participated with GLOSAS/USA for nearly a decade in holding "multipoint-to-multipoint" international teleconferences. These have helped build a network of leaders in the distance education movement as well as further our expertise and resources. We are encouraged to see the possibility of these efforts resulting in an effective US-Russia Electronic Distance Education Agency.
-- Traudl R. Li, Director, University of Hawaii, Office of International Programs and Services

I am writing to endorse the proposal for the Global University long-distance education program between American and Russian institutions. In 1970-1972, while serving as Deputy Associate U.S. Commissioner of Education for Libraries and Educational Technology, in the U.S. Office of Education, we only dreamed of such a futuristic concept, but never with linkage to Russia, I must admit. Now the time is not only here, technologically, for it, but the situation in Russia is desperate and cries out for such a program....

My colleagues and I in the fields of medical education and computer science at Dartmouth are extremely interested in seeing such an electronic network established. Additionally, colleagues with whom I am working in Germany and Central Europe are also interested in becoming a European Community sub-component of the Global University concept. Our close proximity to Russia and the contacts we have already established in the newly free nations of Eastern and Central Europe through a project we have initiated called "East-West Bridges for a two-way Exchange of Expertise and Technology" provides us with a unique opportunity to support such an endeavor.
-- Dr. Harold C. Lyon, Jr., Dartmouth Medical School, Guest Professor, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet, Munich

Many of our institutions currently operate international programs, some of which are funded through the USIA. This project with Russia seems a natural extension of these programs and an opportunity to consider other special undertakings which would be of benefit to agricultural organizations in Russia.
-- Randall Bretz, Ph.D., Assistant Director and Program Manager, AGSAT (Agricultural Satellite Corporation)

NTU endorses the concept of a US-Russia Electronic Distance Education System. The proposal of GLOSAS/USA to establish a linkage with Russia via the NIS University Partnership Program of the US Information Agency is supported by NTU. NTU has already joined with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and EUROSTEP in a joint proposal cooperating with the Bauman Institute in Moscow. This proposal will provide advance management and technical education to 13 sites in Russia via satellite.
-- Dr. Lionel V. Baldwin, President, National Technological University

I am pleased to endorse the proposal for a cooperative linkage relationship between the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK), the Global University in the U.S.A., and the several member institutions of the Association of International Education in Russia. This is potentially a groundbreaking proposal that can respond in a cost effective way to the great need for training in Russia.
-- Chancellor William T. Snyder, University of Tennessee

I am pleased to endorse the proposal for a linkage between The George Washington University (GWU), the Global University in the U.S.A., and the several member institutions of the Association of International Education in Russia. Support from the NIS University Partnerships Program could provide assistance in establishing a long-term distance education program, and foster long-term relationships between GWU and educational institutions throughout Russia.
-- Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, President, The George Washington University

I have been impressed by the number of U.S. institutions who have associated themselves with the GLOSAS/USA project, and I hope that it will go forward. Assuming continued Russian interest, we will certainly seek to establish links between this project and any relevant Russian projects which would be financed under the proposed World Bank loan.
-- Peter T. Knight, Chief, National Economic Management Division, Economic Development Institute, The World Bank

I have been long associated with the Global University in the USA organization which sought to bring the state of the art of international communications, electronic capability, satellite delivery, and contemporary bridging of cultural and historical barriers to bear in opening the access of cross-cultural education in the world. Dr. Takeshi Utsumi, its president and initiator, has been long active and extraordinarily gifted in bringing the several strands of this initiative into focus ...

I have had the keenest of interest in Dr. Utsumi's Global University over many years and I am confident this initiative is of potential great significance for the new initiatives we are trying to develop with the Russian Federation and the former Soviets.
-- Dr. Glenn Olds, executive advisor to GLOSAS/USA, former U.S. ambassador to UNESCO, former president of Kent University, Alaska Pacific University, Fetzer Foundation, and the Better World Society, Commissioner of Natural Resources of the State of Alaska


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URL: http://library.fortlewis.edu/~instruct/glosas/news32.htm

June 1993


GLOSAS NEWS was orinally posted to the WWW at URL: http://library.fortlewis.edu/~instruct/glosas/cont.htm by Tina Evans Greenwood, Library Instruction Coordinator, Fort Lewis College, Durango, Colorado 81301, e-mail: greenwood_t@fortlewis.edu, and last updated May 7, 1999. By her permission the whole Website has been archived here at the University of Tennessee server directory of GLOSAS Chair Dr. Takeshi Utsumi from July 10, 2000 by Steve McCarty in Japan.