News Release
April 1999
Dr. Jim West, Professor and Chair of the Department of
Economics and Business at Moravian College, along with Dr. Galen Godbey,
Director of CAPE (A Community of Agile Partners in Education), and a
select group of professors from other schools, used satellite technology
and the Internet to broadcast a two-hour interactive lecture with the
universities in Romania and Bulgaria on March 31. On April 7 Dr. West
moderated a second telecast to the same universities. They were assisted
via a connection with project participants in Bonn, Germany. The development
of distance-education programs in Eastern Europe has been a developing
project of CAPE for the past year. Professor West serves both as a lecturer
and moderator for the 3-part telecast which will conclude with a broadcast
on April 14 and will involve faculty from other Pennsylvania colleges,
including Wilkes, Gannon, Marywood, Juniata, and Moravian. Student responses
both from Bulgaria and Rumania were positive to the initial broadcast,
and on-going E-mail dialogue has been established to facilitate the
development of additional programs and to respond to their interests.
Professor West, who is a 1996 Fulbright Scholar to Slovakia
in Central Europe, is hopeful that the use of technology in this manner
will enable him and Moravian College to play a part in the educational
needs of this rapid-changing part of the world. "Both the technology
and the audience called for a major shift from his usual teaching style,"
West said. He found the experience both exhilarating and poignant, especially
considering the awful contrast to the events in Yugoslavia, the immediate
neighbor of both Romania and Bulgaria.
