Vol. 20, No. 2 - Spring 2004

Kyrgyzstan scholar and college alumnus wins University award

Myrza Karimov, a college alumnus from Kyrgyzstan, was honored in November with the 2003 Distinguished Leadership Award for Internationals, a new University-wide award conferred by the Office of International Programs.

Karimov received a master’s degree from the college in comparative international development education in 1997. He currently works with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in Bishkek, Kyrgyszstan.

Karimov chose to pursue a graduate degree in the college after meeting Josef Mestenhauser, professor emeritus in educational policy and administration, who at the time coordinated international education programming for the college.

“He asked me what I would change about education in Kyrgyzstan,” Karimov says. “I said that Soviet education had produced robots—not critical thinkers. I wanted to improve my country through education.”

Karimov returned home as an associate professor of linguistics and intercultural communications at Arabaev Kyrgyz State Pedagogical University. In 2001, his book, Education Management, was published, the first textbook of its kind in his country. He was a leading member of the education team of the Kyrgyz parliament and has been a leader in the Newly Independent States College and University Project funded by the U.S. Department of State to improve educational leadership in Kyrgyzstan. The project is co-managed by his university and the University of Minnesota.

Karimov came to Minneapolis to accept the Distinguished Leadership Award, his fourth visit to Minnesota. “When I come to the University now,” Karimov says, “I say I am coming home.”

Just announced in April, recipients of the 2004 Distinguished Leadership Awards for Internationals include another college alumnus, Shigeo Tajima, of Japan, who received a master’s in agricultural education in 1955. He currently is professor emeritus of Obihiro University of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine and is honorary president of the East Asia Pacific Association of Educators in Agriculture and the Environment, an organization he helped to create.

Tajima holds a Ph.D. in agriculture from Hokkaido University and is a past director of the Division of Agricultural Education and Science at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. He also has held leadership positions in the Japanese Ministry of Education and Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries. He has been an active member of Japan’s chapter of the UMAA. The Distinguished Leadership Award will be presented to him in Japan.