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University
trains
Uzbek business leaders
The
country of Uzbekistan, located along the ancient Silk Road
that linked Asia and Europe, has a 4,000-year-history of
producing international traders. The landlocked area gained
independence from the former Soviet Union in December 1991,
and now Uzbekistan's business leaders are working to renew
their heritage -- and UM-Missoula in faraway Montana has
stepped forward to help.
A
group of three administrators and 11 graduate students from
the Higher School of Business in Tashkent, Uzbekistan's
capital city, attended an MBA Essentials Certificate Program
at UM Oct. 6-20. The program was taught by UM School of
Business Administration faculty members. The United Nations
Development Program and UM's Continuing Education Program
were contracted to provide the service.
The
MBA Essentials Certificate Program offers a focused overview
of the theoretical and practical foundations of business
administration without the time commitment needed to pursue
a full master's of business administration program. The
Uzbeks attended classes with titles such as "Competition
& Strategy," "The Contemporary Organization"
and "Building a Business in a Transition Economy."
They also toured area businesses and organizations such
as Home Depot, the Missoulian, US Bank, Smurfit-Stone Container
and the Missoula Chamber of Commerce.
Delegation
members communicated with their new Montana teachers and
friends through interpreter Kozimjon Hasanov. Mannon Aliev,
director of the Higher School of Business, said, "Our
students gained new knowledge and information from these
(UM) faculty members. I believe my students will implement
all they know and have learned at The University of Montana,
and I'm sure this will benefit the development of our country."
Aliev
said they have been impressed with the friendliness and
hospitality of Montanans, who remind him of people in his
homeland, and he hopes for future cooperation between Montana
and Uzbekistan. "We have a lot of resources in our
country, like mining and such, and these things will give
great opportunity for development of business in our country."
The
Uzbeks found Montana through the efforts of UM management
Professor Dick Dailey, who was in Belarus last fall as a
Fulbright scholar. While there, UM legal counsel David Aronofsky
e-mailed Dailey asking if he would be interested in taking
on an assignment with the UN Development Program in Uzbekistan,
doing an assessment of a new business school. Dailey accepted
the assignment and in April went to Tashkent, where he met
administrators and students at the Higher School of Business,
which has the first MBA program in the former Soviet Republic
in a place that is starting to embrace capitalism.
As
a result of the visit, the Uzbek school contacted Dailey
in late August to see if UM could provide a program that
would give its students some form of internship experience
in the United States.
"They
are attempting to bring Western-style management techniques
into their country," Dailey said. "They have a
real tradition of trading there. In fact, traders seem to
have a higher status than manufacturers in their country."
He
said Uzbekistan's landscape is mostly mountains and desert
in the rain shadow of the Himalayas. The economy depends
largely on growing cotton and mining gold. The country shares
a border with Afghanistan to the south, and Uzbekistan recently
assisted the United States during military efforts against
the Taliban. Dailey said the capital city, Tashkent, has
about 2 million people.
Dailey
hopes to strengthen UM's new ties with Uzbekistan. "We
will apply for a U.S. State Department grant to establish
a partnership with our business school and their High School
of Business," he said.
UM
already has secured funding to initiate a Central Asian
Studies Program at the University. To facilitate this effort,
President George Dennison and a UM delegation traveled in
October to Georgia and Kyrgyzstan to sign collaborative
agreements with two institutions - Georgia's Tbilisi Institute
of Asia and Africa and Kyrgyszstan's Naryn State University.
Dennison
said he plans to send a group of UM students and faculty
members to Kyrgyszstan within the next year, all in an effort
to strengthen ties with an area too long ignored by Americans.
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