Faculty Voice: Teaching English in Uzbekistan opens doors to cross-cultural learning and collaboration

Shannon Donnally Quinn is an associate professor of Russian in the Department of Linguistics, Languages and Cultures at Michigan State University.

I traveled to Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, this summer to teach in a collaborative program between the Tashkent Institute of Irrigation and Agricultural Mechanization Engineers, or TIIAME, and Michigan State University’s English Language Center. This initiative, titled “Professional English for Water Resource Management Specialists,” was sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.

The program brought together professors and graduate students from TIIAME for an intensive six-day training designed to enhance their English proficiency in the context of hydrology and water resource management, as well as to strengthen their academic writing and speaking skills. Participants engaged in activities such as drafting conference proposals, exploring international hydrology conferences and practicing professional networking through a mock academic conference.

As part of the program, I taught the participants English. I’m used to teaching Russian language instead of English, since that’s what I do at Michigan State, but the method of teaching is the same. And, in both cases, I have the privilege of learning from the people that I’m talking with.

I really enjoyed learning about Uzbekistan from the participants in the program. I also got to learn a little about their area of expertise — water management, an area of study that is going to be so important in the 21st century and beyond.

During my travels, I not only explored Tashkent but also visited the ancient city of Samarkand, which is renowned for its mosaic architecture dating back to the 11th–14th centuries.

The trip gave me the opportunity to learn more about Uzbekistan and to collect materials for a potential new chapter for the Open Educational Resource, or OER, I developed with my colleague, Anna Tumarkin, who is the Russian language program director at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Our OER, “Diverse Russian: A Multicultural Exploration,” shifts the focus from Russia to the many diverse cultures and communities that speak Russian around the world.

The OER highlights the Russian-speaking populations of Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Georgia, the Baltic states and even Russian-speaking communities in the United States, offering students a richer, more complex understanding of the language and the people who speak it. It also has one chapter on Indigenous populations in Russia. The OER launched in August 2024 and was supported by the Less Commonly Taught and Indigenous Languages Partnership and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

I hope to add a new chapter on Uzbekistan to the OER sometime in the next few years. While most people in Uzbekistan speak Uzbek as their native language, many people also speak Russian as a second language, making it a great place for students of Russian to learn about.

In addition to the chapter on Uzbekistan, I hope to add chapters on the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan, so there will be a total of three chapters on Central Asia. Many students are studying abroad in Central Asia now, so learning about these places is essential as they prepare for their time there.

I also hope my experience in Uzbekistan will help foster further collaboration between MSU and academic partners in Central Asia.

Read more about my work expanding Russian language learning.