DePaul University Associate Accountancy Professor John Ahern and several other professors from the Kellstadt Graduate School of Business will be heading to the former Soviet republic of Tatarstan for a series of three-month teaching and research stints that begin in February. The three-year faculty exchange program is funded by a $250,000 United States Information Agency (USIA) grant awarded to DePaul.

Ahern, director of DePaul’s Institute for Business and Professional Ethics, received the USIA grant in August to fund the professor exchange between DePaul and Kazan State University (KSU), located in Tatarstan, an autonomous Muslim region about 500 miles east of Moscow. Ahern taught at the school as a Fulbright scholar in the mid-1990s and has returned numerous times as a seminar leader and speaker.

Each quarter, four DePaul professors will team teach a variety of subjects to students in Tatarstan and also will hold seminars for local professors and business professionals about western business practices. Privatization and the move to a market economy are two major issues in the region, Ahern said. Classes will be taught in English, though translators will be utilized when needed.

Several KSU professors will come to DePaul to teach and conduct international business research as part of the exchange. The program is designed to help implement new curriculum at KSU, further international research at both institutions and create a greater understanding of Tatarstan as an emerging region in world business, financial and political areas.

“This grant award is recognition of Kellstadt’s commitment to cooperative ventures in international business education,” Ahern said. “This exchange will not only further faculty development at both schools, it will bring a firsthand understanding of another country’s business culture directly to students in the classroom.”

The relationship between DePaul and KSU has resulted in student exchanges as well. Ahern noted that several KSU students have traveled to Chicago and are enrolled in DePaul’s MBA in International Marketing and Finance program. The latest recipient of Russia’s prestigious Yeltsin Scholar award for international business studies has chosen to pursue his MBA at DePaul—over every other American university, he added.

The program is but one of a wide array of global business education opportunities offered by Kellstadt. The business school offers its MBA program in Hong Kong, and plans to open similar programs in Bangkok and Bahrain during the next year and a half. Meanwhile, Kelstadt’s Richard H. Driehaus Center for International Business sponsors more than 26 student exchange programs with prestigious business schools all over the world, as well as short-term business seminars for DePaul students and professors who will travel to Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, France, Russia, Korea, Japan, India, Napal and Italy for seminars during 2001.

The Driehaus Center also hosts the International Business Seminar Series for Executives, a series of one-week trips to international business centers for Chicago-area business and technology executives who want to explore new markets overseas.

“Kellstadt is expanding its programs globally because we believe it is important for our faculty to gain firsthand exposure to international business markets and bring this knowledge back to our classrooms in Chicago,” College of Commerce Dean Arthur Kraft said. “More than 60 percent of the faculty have taught and researched abroad, so they teach from experience, not just from a textbook.”