Centers of Education in Russia
The Case for CASEs

by Susan King

After the fall of the Soviet Union, there were fears that
universities in the new Russia would not be able to support a high level of scholarship. A visit to see the results of a Corporation-supported project designed to advance the intellectual life of this vast, mercurial country provided
memorable impressions for the author and her colleagues.

As an upbeat American jazz band played from a balcony loft in a crowded and popular restaurant in central Russia, Mary Popova’s face beamed with the pleasure of telling me what the fellows grant she had received as a result of Carnegie Corporation’s support of higher education in Russia meant to her. Across the noisy table, Popova, a professor of literature at Voronezh State University, a Russian regional institution celebrating its 85th year, said, “First of all, it meant that my application was high quality, and that was professionally affirming.” The fellowship had also given Popova the ability to spend a semester studying at the University of Kansas, an experience that included having access to books that she told me, “I never dreamed I could put my hands on.”

“Was that what living in America represented to you?” I asked “Access to scholarship?”

“Well, living in America changed my perceptions of the country and I never thought that at my age, I could change,” said this intense, enthusiastic woman, the single mother of a grown son. “But I did!” she exclaimed.

I was intrigued. “Have your new perceptions changed your work?” I said, almost shouting as the band cranked up.

“Yes,” Popova replied. “Now, I focus on results. I used to focus on process, but in America, results matter.” Popova’s eyes sparkled. Clearly, I was talking to a happy woman who was proud that she was no longer just a professor, or even a professor with a sought-after Carnegie fellowship. Now, she was also the academic advisor of the Voronezh Center for Advanced Study and Education (CASE), one of nine CASEs established by Carnegie Corporation of New York since 2000. I had come to Russia to visit four of them.

A Reporter’s Journey
I was part of a group who had traveled to Russia in November 2003 to see the results of the Corporation-sponsored CASE program, which is aimed at revitalizing higher education in the former Soviet Union through the establishment of university-based centers dedicated to the promotion of scholarship, publications, academic mobility, international networking and access to resources. Although for several years now I have been the vice president, public affairs for the Corporation, most of my earlier career had been spent as a journalist, and my reporter’s passion to understand and explain issues and events meant that I came to Russia looking for the real story of the CASEs, to see if the strategies, plans and programs so carefully conceived by the Corporation and its partners in the venture, energetically debated among all involved and now being implemented in Russian universities, were working out as we had all hoped.

I was joined by Corporation colleagues who have a trained eye for evaluation: Neil Grabois, vice president and director for strategic planning and program coordination; Ed Sermier, vice president and chief administrative officer and corporate secretary; and Deana Arsenian, the leader of our group, senior program officer in the Corporation’s International Peace and Security program and the person within the Corporation responsible for this complicated Russian initiative. She wanted a high-level delegation to visit the universities in order to emphasize to the Russian educational leadership how important the CASE initiative is to
the Corporation and its partners, the Russian Ministry of Education and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

I was planning to write about my impressions of the CASEs when I got back to New York, but I knew that doing so would present a challenge on many levels. For example, I understood that for the first time in my experience as a journalist, I would be writing for an audience who could not necessarily take my objectivity for granted. As a member of the Corporation team that is responsible for both shaping an ambitious program like CASEs and making it accountable, I was not simply a journalist documenting and reporting: I had—and have—a stake in the outcome. I was also aware that years from now, those of us who helped create the CASEs will be judged on the impact and wisdom of this initiative, which will run for six-to-nine years and cost approximately $20 million in the pursuit of a singular goal: reinvigorating a post-Communist Russian university system that had, for the most part, abandoned regional intellectuals and scholars to the free-market uncertainties of modern life.

Under the leadership of Vartan Gregorian, the Corporation’s president, who had taken office in 1997 promising that the foundation would take risks, learn from its mistakes and disseminate information about what works in its programs and what doesn’t, I set out on this long trek that wound its way from Moscow to St. Petersburg to Rostov on the Don with a journalist’s curiosity, a storyteller’s imperative and a healthy degree of skepticism.

Results, Not Process
The morning after Popova showed us the renewed night life of Voronezh, a city almost totally destroyed by the German army in World War II and now the very picture of a rebuilt metropolis, albeit Soviet style, she led a presentation about the Voronezh CASE in a crowded, well-lit and book-lined office. Voronezh State University, like all the other institutions that had submitted proposals and won the competition to create a CASE, had to provide prime real estate for the CASE office, its computer center and its library. The walls were newly painted and the shelves were of shiny wood, a surprise after a long walk through an otherwise down-on-its-luck building just off the city square, where an imposing statue of Lenin still stood.

Next page: “I focus on results. I used to focus on process, but in America, results matter.” —Mary Popova, academic advisor of the Voronezh CASE

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