More students, less funding for Ukrainian program (08/25/96)

More students, less funding for Ukrainian program

by Christopher Guly

OTTAWA - When it comes to monitoring the direct effects Ukraine's five-year-old independence has had on businesspeople with or without ties to the country, they need only look at the air miles and long-distance telephone charges racked up as a result of partnerships forged with the former Soviet republic.

But the new pathway between Canada and Ukraine has not been limited to broadening exports and imports. In Edmonton, it has helped broaden many minds.

During the 1994-1995 academic year, 174 undergraduate students were enrolled in Ukrainian courses with the University of Alberta's Slavic and East European studies department. One hundred seventeen, or 67 percent of the students, studied the language. Thirty-four students, or 20 percent of the total, studied Ukrainian literature - an enrollment higher than the total of those who attended a similar program conducted anywhere in Canada between 1984 and 1994.

And, the numbers keep growing.

In the upcoming academic year, 445 students are registered in the university's new division of Slavic and East European studies. Just under half, or 220 students, will be taking Ukrainian courses - and about 65 percent of those will be studying the Ukrainian language.

Furthermore, half of the division's 30 graduate students are working toward degrees in either Ukrainian language, literature or folklore. No other academic institution in North America can boast such numbers.

Under different circumstances, Dr. Natalia Pylypiuk and Dr. Oleh Ilnytzkyj, who teach the lion's share of the Ukrainian courses offered at the U. of A., should be popping the champagne corks to mark Ukraine's fifth birthday of freedom. This year, however, their celebration will be a pensive one.

"One of the difficulties we have, being in a large university, is that it's always easy to pick on the smallest programs," said Dr. Ilnytzkyj, who obtained his Ph.D. in Ukrainian literature from Harvard University in 1983.

"The problem we have is that they go by a head count, look at enrollments and come to the conclusion that because we have a smaller enrollment than other programs, then perhaps we are less valuable than other departments," he explained.

In the spring of 1995, the University of Alberta amalgamated the department of Slavic and East European studies into the department of modern languages and comparative studies - along with French, Spanish, German, religion and film. Slavic and East European studies became one of the divisions within the new super-department.

Added to the Ukrainian program's plight have been deep budgetary cuts to university funding by Alberta's Con-servative government.

Although interest in Ukrainian studies looks good on both paper and in the number of occupied chairs in classrooms, Drs. Pylypiuk and Ilnytzkyj have to share one administrative support employee with six of their professorial colleagues in the division. They are also paid to teach courses: six undergraduate and one graduate course for Dr. Pylypiuk, who also serves as undergraduate adviser; and four undergraduate courses and two graduate courses for Dr. Ilnytzkyj, who also serves as associate chairperson and graduate coordinator of the department of modern languages and comparative studies.

Between them, they are also currently supervising three students who are working on their graduate dissertations in Ukrainian studies.

If they had some funds, they could hire a graduate to help out. The problem is that any extra monies they receive beyond their allowance from the Faculty of Arts amounts to a few thousand dollars - through private endowments, currently earmarked for Ukrainian folklore studies. This pales in comparison to the millions of dollars their campus colleague, the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, receives.

"A lot of people assume wrongly the Canadian institute is also a teaching unit," said Dr. Ilnytzkyj. "What has to be emphasized is that it's just a research institute. They do not teach and do not train graduate students. What they do is support scholars."

Support - and recognition - is something for which Drs. Ilnytzkyj and Pylypiuk are desperate.

"Twenty years ago, enrollment in Russian studies was higher than Ukrainian studies. This fall, less than half, or 105 students, are enrolled in the Russian program compared with the Ukrainian program," noted Dr. Pylypiuk, who also obtained a Ph.D. in Ukrainian literature from Harvard University.

"We want to emphasize that Ukrainian language and literature studies should endure beyond the idea of heritage studies. Within the context of the university, this a discipline that deserves the same kind of attention French or Spanish receives," she added.

Certainly, two of their graduate students of Korean and Japanese origin need no convincing of the scholarly validity of Ukrainianism. But Peruvian-born Dr. Pylypiuk and German-born Dr. Ilnytzkyj are not about to lose hope that their dreams of academic validation will come true.

Besides, they're simply too busy for that.

Dr. Pylypiuk will be further developing her beginner's Ukrainian textbook for students with no background in the language, titled "Mandry," and Dr. Ilnytzkyj will be adapting Ukrainian language studies for computer use - with the goal of creating a course on the Internet by the end of 1997.