New Turkmen students arrive late on campus

 

Some of the 49 new Turkmen students arrived at the AUBG campus around two weeks after the Spring 2010 semester started. Many of them transferred from the American University in Central Asia (AUCA) after the Turkmen government decided that it did not approve of the non-accredited status of AUCA, Dean of Faculty Steve Sullivan said.

A way for them to complete their education was to come to AUBG; however, they were not issued exit visas last semester and only recently the government approved of the continuation of their education at AUBG, Sullivan added.

Former AUCA seniors will need to spend two more years at AUBG to get an AUBG degree, Sullivan said. According to the Academic Catalog, in order to graduate, students must complete 120 credit hours, and at least 60 credit hours should be earned in residence.

"Some people were early, some people were late and therefore it was hard to organize a proper orientation week. They went through all the other things like computer training," Resident Assistant Ah Se Lee said.

"We saw the library, got Outlook Express accounts, had computer training [and] diversity training," student Albina Volosevich said. "Turkmen students who were studying here before were very excited. They met us and they made a special Blagoevgrad trip," Volosevich added.

Before they started going to classes, every student was assigned to an academic advisor. "My advisor was Alf Eastergard. He did make a pretty good picture in my mind like what I need to take, as I was so messed up when I came here first, because of the differences of the courses and new requirements," student Anastasiya Kuznesova said.

In spite of missing the first two weeks of studies, new students are expected to catch up. "I tried to organize some make-up classes in order to recover the classes they lost, it is an essential thing if we give a new start to them; explain the syllabus, the assignments, and give them a general idea of what we are having here," History professor Pierangelo Castagneto said.

"The students appear to be excellent students. They seem to be very good in English and I've also noticed that most of the students are comfortable coming up after class and asking me any additional questions," Journalism professor Phelps Hawkins said.

Many students said that there is a difference between AUCA's and AUBG's education style, although they are both American universities. "Comparing to AUCA, classes here are differently oriented. Studying Political Science and International Relations I was expected to write research papers at AUCA, but here classes are based more on lectures, midterms, and quizzes," student Maksat Annamyradov said.

The requirements of the two universities also vary. "At AUCA we had to study Russian and Kirgiz - at AUBG you are not required to study Bulgarian. Another difference is that at AUCA parts of the lectures were in Russian," student Sevil Bairamova said.

"AUBG for me is a really diverse community consisting of a lot of students. This makes [it] very rich as you can learn a lot, gain a lot, and share a lot," Annamyradov added.