Expats moved to Russia to inspire and motivate students

today we are going to take a look at the lives of some of the professors who come to the school of advanced studies in chain to do all sorts of humanitarian research some are here to work some are here to stay but all of them want to make Russia and Russian education much better Hello friends and Welcome to our program anything's possible you know as an immigrant in Russia I see potential everywhere around me including right here in tumain but the thing is a lot of Russian people don't seem to t

hey just want to sit home and complain so I decided to put together this program where we go around the country to meet people who have taken their lives into their own hands have a can do attitude far far away from the big lights and bigger money of Moscow tumain is a bit of a mystery for me this small City always seems to win Awards and online polls beating Moscow and St Petersburg for the best place to live in Russia the cleanest city in Russia and the city with the highest level of happiness

and so on well reality seems to match up with the pr because things here seem very pleasant and [Music] clean so I just sold a 19th Century House in New Zealand Erica wolf was born and raised in New York City she graduated from Princeton played women's rugby for Team USA and spent many years working as a professor in New Zealand a quite gorgeous house okay many of our so I had a view of the Pacific Ocean here I have a view of the Tura River a nice view people say oh you're going to Siberia you'

re going to freeze I'm like no actually now you know i' I'm never cold here in New Zealand I'm cold a lot of the time it might be 12 degrees outside well it's 16 indoors and get you get chile um my study in New Zealand I literally had a uh a fireplace like a a pellet burning fireplace like right next to my desk so that I could get work done okay I don't have those problems here well yeah here it's like a tropical jungle in December on the yeah you have to like strip down and put your bikini [Mus

ic] on this is one of the reasons why I came out here because the Siberia versus getting a job someplace else like in Moscow or Petersburg because David Doo is from Boston he got his Masters in PhD from the University of Helsinki in Finland and has worked as a market analyst in the field of oil natural gas you're still in touch with these sorts of crafts and arts and I mean you know even though that there's just a mix you know you've got these sorts of brick buildings here well yeah we have like

19th century wood against a highrise the first time I was in the Soviet Union was 1988 and I've spent 30 years either researching or traveling in this country and among all the other options at the time and I was sorting through um this came to feel like it was the best match in terms of what value added I could provide and in terms of the professional side and in terms of my personal preferences uh 1993 was the first time I came to Russia and uh I'm a specialist on Russian culture I feel quite

a I dare I say quite at home here but I've been traveling and living in Russia on and off for many years being in education I'm trying to create characters trying to change people's minds perceptions ideas I think on a more direct level it's getting the students here to think about the world from a different perspective uh to understand that their opinion matters that their ideas can actually have an impact we're living in a time of incredible sort of transition and transformation the digital r

evolutions the uh uh even greater sort of globalization of the economy uncertainty about the future automation is is having and going to have even bigger impacts what do you get out of that will you develop broad literacy competency critical thinking the ability to understand things like math to understand uh uh different systems and to deal with complexity so so what we're we're trying to create that type of liberal art and science degree here in Russia to have students who are familiar broadly

with Humanities The Sciences who have critical thinking skills who have social group working [Music] [Music] skills it's again because I'm not integrated fully into the society here it can be difficult sometimes to find things to [Music] do but uh outside of work I mean I'm training uh swimming I used to be a water polo player coach water polo when I was in Finland and being part of a team sport being in the pool every day is something has been always been something that's important to me so I'

ve been able to find that here so I'm a rugby player I'm a I'm very much a team player I'm someone who likes to work with a team who likes to try to and I've worked as a coach as well as a referee and so part of it like a challenge to try to get the team to be running [Music] [Music] better rugby is great like I travel around the world I find the rugby people and it's like my [Music] home so it was great coming here knowing there'd be a place for me that I'd have a new home and sure enough I met

them last fall and immediately I have I have like you know 30 new friends some [Music] town you find your way I mean okay we were talking about this morning the bubble yeah that exists I think that's one of the things that we need to break through when you stay here longer you mean the bubble between like sort of expats and locals and locals and then find finding out what the locals do in their free time MH and um you know not everybody can go and train where I train not everyone can come to th

is restaurant or hang out with us as xats so I think if we want to get more from this experience we have have to reach out [Music] further like all professors Erica has many books but the problem is they are currently on the other side of the world in New Zealand uh it's pretty insane it's probably about 70 boxes of books 70 boxes of books well and so I'm I'm an arti I'm an art historian and a lot of the books aren't available as ebooks right and the uh they're uh lots of them are images yeah uh

they're limited runs one of the funny things is a lot of them are in Russian already it's they coming back home they're coming back home but I had to pay a bunch of Duty on them anyways [Music] see I asked Erica to show me her favorite piece of architecture in tumin to my surprise she chose to show me a very unusual Orthodox Church this is the church uh of All Saints mhm it's uh an early 19th century yeah neoclassical Church yeah it's not in the best shape uh no it's I think it might have seen

some better days but I'm actually very thrilled we just heard from one of the priests that it's actually finely slated for significant restoration work it's under Federal Protection I was teaching my students about St Peters in the Vatican and Berman's original design was one of these perfect round churches was then changed yeah um but so it it was great to actually have that tie in and to be able to bring my students here see and to have us look at it huh and that was interesting um you know I'

m not Russian Orthodox I'm I'm a fallen Catholic I see but uh for many of the students it was I I became aware quickly that many of them probably hadn't been in a church before well no I have a strong feeling that yeah probably a lot and certainly not for their university studies well and they weren't thinking that there would be something there for them once we got inside and they started started noticing the artwork and they realized that they recognized some of the the images from what we'd b

een studying and I think this light bulb went off like oh actually I am learning useful things and it's not about that oh I'm trying to propagandize you for the religion no but that it's this bigger sort of human Heritage and the stories and the architecture I think the other thing is that they want to get away from this sort of rot learning where you go into college I'm going to be biologist because Mom told me I was going to be a biologist then you go to your ma and you do your ma in biology y

ou go to do your PhD you do your PhD in biology you get your PhD you defend it and then you're an unemployed biologist those types of people are gold dust yeah you're not going to find them no one graduates these people and you can't tailor make them yeah yeah you know what you have to do is you have to teach people how to think and hopefully exactly exactly exactly these are the cognitive things that we're f focus on here and you know an ideal student for for us for me would be one you know who

's done say some NOS coding understands it but also might be interested in art and Ma maybe they're majors in economics but they've got broad competency and they're going to be good sort of citizens and good good employees and hopefully leaders in in Russia in the [Music] future why did you come to tumain and what's your mission here okay I think it was just one of those points in time where you you figure out that it it makes sense it was the right time right place and when I heard about the pr

oject that they were going to be doing this you know very different and new small liberal art style school with multi-disciplinary research groups it was incredibly appealing to me I mean when I came here was I was thinking okay it's not Moscow it's not Peter Petersburg it's Siberia how stressful can it be in Siberia how stressful can it be in Russia in general and then I found out that people work here 8 to8 uh the amount of um work that these guys do on a daily basis how much they're willing t

o and it's not even called overtime it's just work I mean because we're building an institution here it makes it even more intense so the temp of life is very very quick it flies and that makes it more difficult to coordinate everything that you want to do and accomplish while you have a contract going out to the provinces going out to all these other places that are vibrant that have very interesting local cultures um is you know is important I and I know this you know like I I spend a lot of t

ime in Moscow and Petersburg related to my work and they're filled with people who are afraid to leave those places and if you're going to study uh and you're going to have like that intensive intellectual life you need more isolation me I see it from the perspective that I think this place is going to change me more than I'm going to change here we don't have specific Specialties we don't have academic departments here so we work on inter interdisciplinary research teams we're trying to develop

liberal arts education we focus on some of the softer skills uh that you don't get from a purely engineering [Music] background