ABE’s Steve Mickelson and Ardith Maney, along with the Rector of the Georgian Technical University, Archil Prangishvili and Dr. Lali Gogeliani, met on July 31, 2018 with the Minister of Education and Science, Mikheil Chkhenkeli, in Tbilisi, Georgia. The purpose of the meeting was to brief Minister Chkhenkeli on the joint activities of Georgian Technical University and Iowa State University during the past 15 years and explore opportunities for new collaboration under the joint Memorandum of Understanding between the two universities.
The purpose of the visit by the six-person ISU team was two-fold. One part was a six-day training-of-trainers program taught by a four-person team of occupational safety and health curriculum experts which was attended by 65 Georgian university and industry representatives on occupational OSH topics at ISU. The second set of activities focused on meetings with officials from the US Embassy and international funding agencies about successful joint activities from the first fifteen years of joint work.
The meetings were capped by presentations by the GTU rector and the guests from ISU at a meeting held at GTU’s new Agricultural Faculty building which was established of offer bachelor’s programs in agronomy, animal science, and land & water which was assisted by curriculum experts from counterpart departments at ISU. That meeting was hosted by Rector Prangishvili and by ABE’s collaborator at GTU, Lali Gogeliani.