The University of Wyoming says ‘bon voyage’ to journalism professor George Gladney as he departs on his teaching exchange to Kazakhstan.
Gladney leaves Laramie today to teach two seven-week courses at the National University in Kazakhstan as part of an agreement between the National University and UW.
“It has been an unusual semester,” Gladney said. “I crammed two courses into the first half of the semester. That allowed me to be able to go to Kazakhstan for seven weeks.”
UW and the National University recently entered into a cooperative agreement where students and faculty will be shared between the two institutions. Gladney, who has taught journalism for 22 years at UW, is the first professor to teach a full seven-week course at the partner school.
His courses, one undergraduate and one on the graduate level, will focus on communications. The undergraduate course, Mass Media and Society, will incorporate concepts from several courses he teaches at UW and the graduate course will focus on qualitative and quantitative research methods.
The classes will be taught in English, although Russian is spoken by about 70 percent of Kazakhstan’s population. The remaining percentage speaks Kazakhstani, Glandey said.
“There are a lot of students that speak English at the University,” he said. “ I am told my students are going to range from very good in English to not very good. I am going to have to be flexible and be ready for anything.”
Gladney said he is excited about getting to travel out of the country again and is anticipating being very busy with his job. He will be spending four hours every day in the classroom teaching his new students.
Gladney is already looking at another international trip shortly after he returns to the States. About two weeks after he returns from Kazakhstan, he will be traveling to teach at Shanghai’s University in China. Gladney says he looks forward to coming back to Wyoming afterwards to tend his garden during the summer.
Although he was not born in Wyoming, this state has developed a special place in his heart, he said. Originally from the New England area, Gladney moved to Columbia, Mo. to acquire his B.J. from the University of Missouri. Soon after, Gladney received what he considered his “lucky break” as an intern with the Los Angeles Times, a position that led to full time employment.
After accepting the job in Los Angeles in 1971, Gladney slowly worked his way back to the state he now calls home.
“On my way to Los Angeles, I drove through Colorado,” Gladney said. “I had never been in Colorado before and I thought it was beautiful place. We were driving over one of the passes there and I thought ‘My God, this is fabulous.’”
In the years following his move to Los Angeles, he returned to Colorado before moving to Jackson Hole and then Laramie. In 1991, he applied for a job as a journalism professor at the University of Wyoming.
“It was the perfect job; it had my name all over it,” he said with a smile. “I have been generally very happy with the quality of students here at UW. They are just nice people. I really enjoy the students here. I would put my best students up with the best students at University of Illinois, and that is a Big Ten school.”
Gladney plans to continue travelling and is considering retiring in Poland next year, he said.
“I have put in a big investment trying to learn the Polish language and it would be foolish for me to go anywhere but Poland.”
