Penn State is one of nine Big Ten schools providing an academic lifeline to scholars in war-torn Ukraine.
The University is sponsoring seven Ukrainian academics as part of the 2025 IU-Ukraine Nonresidential Scholars Program. Three of the scholars are being funded by the College of the Liberal Arts' Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literature, two by Penn State Global, one by the College of Agricultural Sciences and one by the Edwin Erle Sparks professorship of Catherine Wanner, professor of history, of anthropology and of religious studies.
Established by Indiana University in the wake of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the program supports Ukrainian scholars whose work and ability to travel has been impeded by the war. Thanks to financial support from the Big Ten Academic Alliance, the program has expanded to include Penn State, the Ohio State University, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Michigan State University, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin, University of Washington and University of Maryland.
All fellows in the program receive a $5,000 stipend to continue their scholarship. In addition, they gain access to the participating schools' significant online library resources, and the opportunity to collaborate with faculty members on research and teaching projects. The fellows also present their research at bimonthly virtual research seminars that will serve as the cornerstone of Indiana's Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian Studies Conference in March.
This year's cohort, the third overall, consists of about 35 Ukrainian scholars working in the social sciences and humanities. The theme for 2024-25 is "Preservation and Restoration," particularly as it relates to the war in Ukraine.
Wanner said Penn State has long been engaged in this type of outreach through other programs such as the Scholars at Risk Network, which evacuates scholars from war zones and places them in American universities.
"It became clear that, especially in the case of Ukraine, it was going to be difficult to sustain a residential program given the level of displacement and the mobilization," Wanner said. "This nonresidential model provides assistance to scholars wherever they are, making it much more useful for Ukrainian scholars and sustainable for American universities."
And the program provides a number of benefits to the Penn State community, Wanner said. She recalled one of her classes watching a virtual guest lecture with a Ukrainian scholar that was abruptly interrupted by the sound of air raid sirens going off. The scholar, she said, had minutes to get to a bomb shelter.
"Kyiv was being bombed at that moment," Wanner said. "It was quite an extraordinary experience for those of us sitting in Happy Valley - hearing those sirens and feeling what it's like to live with that kind of constant stress and vulnerability. These are valuable experiences that illustrate how horrific it is to endure an invasion and live amidst war. These kinds of exchanges are a great way to bring these contemporary issues to the fore."
In addition to Wanner, the other Penn State faculty members collaborating with the Ukrainian scholars are: Ekaterina Haskins, professor of communication arts and sciences; Alexandra Staub, professor of architecture; Olena Zotova, associate teaching professor of Russian; Yuliya Ladygina, associate professor of Slavic and global and international studies; Adrian Wanner, distinguished professor of Slavic languages and comparative literature; and Calvin Norman, assistant teaching professor of forestry.
