UKRAINIAN RESOURCE and DEVELOPMENT CENTRE
Research & Projects
From local projects to international research initiatives, our activities benefit students and communities at home, across the country and in Ukraine.
Academic initiatives
From the Interdisciplinary Dialogue Project and the Model UN Club to courses that take place in Ukraine, many URDC activities are influenced by or directly related to campus activities. Our students and faculty members benefit immensely from the opportunities these initiatives provide.
The Canada Ukraine Model United Nations Project was launched in 2019 with the vision of developing a community of students from Canada and Ukraine who are interested and engaged in global issues and in promoting respect for the values of democratic principles and fundamental human rights. Students from the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy (NaUKMA), Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) and MacEwan University have been collaborating, creating, teaching, and learning together through in-person and virtual meetings, training, and conference participation.
The students' next goal is joint participation at the National Model United Nations – New York conference in March 2022, and in two mini conferences leading up to it. MacEwan alumni (and former members of the UN Club) continue to take an active role in the initiative by providing training and presentations to the Ukrainian partners. Both UCU and NaUKMA UN Clubs, created only in 2021, boast active and engaged participants and ongoing programming.
Notably, a faculty learning community was built as a result of this initiative. Dr. Chaldeans Mensah, Dr. Dmytro Sherengovsky, Dr. Dmytro Ishchenko, Kateryna Podhorska, and Larisa Hayduk presented on the success of the Canada Ukraine Model UN Project at the Canadian Bureau for International Education annual conference. Professors from three universities – Dr. Halyna Protsyk (UCU), Dr. Galyna Solovei (NaUKMA) and Dr. Chaldeans Mensah (MacEwan) – have co-developed and will co-teach a Collaborative Online International Learning course (COIL) focused on the principles of the National Model United Nations (NMUN) in Winter 2022. This comes on the heels of the development of the International Organizations course taught twice by Dr. Protsyk with support from MacEwan. The participants are grateful for financial support from several community organizations in Alberta and generous support from the NMUN Board to see these projects to completion.
The Canada Ukraine Model UN represents an outstanding achievement and is proud of the long-lasting, productive, and mutually beneficial relationships that have been formed with its Ukrainian counterparts at NaUKMA and UCU.
Through the endowment from this fund, the Faculty of Nursing upgrades nursing technology used for teaching on campus and in MacEwan nursing projects abroad. Long-time URDC and MacEwan partner, Ternopil National Medical University in Ukraine, was the first international partner to benefit from the fund, which was created through contributions from Drs. Peter and Doris Kule and matched by MacEwan University. In 2020, the fund was valued at $1.57 million.
URDC and members of Team Ukraїna at MacEwan have partnered with the Resilience Research Centre (RRC) at Dalhousie University for a research project titled The Impact of Temporary Status on the Settlement Experience of Newcomer Ukrainian Youth in Canada Arriving under the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel (CUAET) Visa. Funded by SSHRC and led by Dr. Michael Unger, a distinguished researcher from the Resilience Research Center at Dalhousie University, this four-year research project unites researchers from across Canada.
Our passionate team includes dedicated faculty and staff from MacEwan University and the University of Alberta in Edmonton. The study is about understanding and comparing temporary visa policies for people escaping hardships, including temporary visas for Ukrainians, and how these policies are implemented on international, national and provincial levels. In particular, the study aims to investigate:
- The process of implementing temporary visa policies, programs and services
- The role of experts/policy experts within this process; the government and non-government stakeholders involved; how services are coordinated and administered
- The network of partnerships that have developed or become strengthened
- The challenges that have occurred throughout policy implementation
- How policy implementation varies across different locations
The Indigenous-Ukrainian Relationship Building Initiative is a joint initiative between the Kule Folklore Centre, University of Alberta (KuFC), and the Ukrainian Resource and Development Centre, MacEwan University (URDC). Our main goal is to advance knowledge about, explore and reflect on our Ukrainian Canadian history and our shared Indigenous-Ukrainian pasts, in order to build a better future together for the well-being of all.
A donation from Drs. Peter and Doris Kule, matched by funds from the Government of Alberta through the MacEwan Foundation, created an endowment to support visiting scholars.
Since 2006, more than 30 scholars have contributed to the academic and public profile of MacEwan University, to student learning and to the understanding of Ukrainian Studies. Scholars have enhanced the student experience through research, lectures, seminars, performances, collaborations, consultations and publications in the field of Ukrainian Studies and its component disciplines. Recent visiting scholars include Dr. Svitlana Yastermska and Dr. Lyudmyla Mazur, from Ternopil National Medical University, and Dr. Ostap Maychyk and Dr. Bohdan Dashak from Lviv National Music Academy.
Several MacEwan courses have a particular connection with the Ukrainian Resources and Development Centre:
HLST 400 Global Health Perspectives: Global Health Perspectives (HLST 400) takes place at two Ukrainian universities, the Ternopil National Medical University (TNMU) and the Ukrainian Catholic University, School of Language and Culture in Lviv. In this course, students connect with policy makers, health care workers, students, faculty and health care agencies from the Ukraine, gaining a deeper understanding of current and future global health issues and opportunities and their role as global citizens and healthcare professionals.
SOCI 395 Sociological Field School: Using sociological theories, concepts and research methods, students study a social issue of global relevance in a country other than Canada. Over the course of the field school, students meet and collaborate with Canadian agencies and institutions as well as agencies, institutions, faculty and students at our Ukrainian partner campuses. They are given the opportunity to travel to another country and compare its laws, policies, culture and social practices with those from home.
COSL 301 Building Peaceful Communities: This international, community service learning course promotes meaningful student participation in community projects locally and internationally. Students from various degree programs participate in a week-long lecture and workshop component in Canada, followed by a three-week community service (volunteer) experience in Ukraine. Utilizing the skills from their disciplines, students prepare and implement a project within the larger framework of the community organization. Following the experience, one student reflected, "Volunteering in Ukraine has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. It taught me that we are truly one big community, where there are no borders and where we all speak the same language when we open our hearts."
POLS 368 International Organizations: Developed to follow Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) methodology, this course was first offered in Winter 2022. This collaborative project brings together long-term partners in the Ukraine. URDC initiated, supported and provided guidance on the COIL framework and continues coordinating and serving as a bridge to connect cultures and institutions.
Qualitative research methods: Initiated and coordinated by URDC, this non-credit professional development course is for faculty and student partners at the Ternopil National Medical University. The course was developed in collaboration with the Faculty of Nursing, Dr. Elizabeth Burgess-Pinto the Chair of International Health and Dr. Olenka Bilash, president of Ukrainian Foundation for College Education.
This research study, led by Dr. Elizabeth Burgess-Pinto, brought together a team of researchers—Dr. Olabisi Oyalema and Larysa Hayduk—who are interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the challenges experienced by displaced mothers of school-aged children and of their strengths in encountering related challenges. The team partnered with Slinko, an artist who is creating a poetic video interpretation of the mother’s stories. A narrative inquiry methodology has been used to gain insight into how Ukrainian mothers who arrived in Canada with the temporary visa program make sense of their ruptured life stories and how they work to maintain their identities and lives in temporary conditions.
Participants engaged in conversations that focused on their experiences, relating stories that capture the complexities of experiences that can be obscured by other research approaches. The research will present the threads that resonate across the mothers’ narrative accounts and the relevance of these threads to the temporary visa status of protected residents who are neither refugees nor permanent residents.
Since 2014, faculty members from MacEwan University and Ternopil National Medical University in Ukraine, have collaborated on several projects, including a course in global health. Building on previous collaborations, their current research aims to understand and compare the COVID-19 pandemic experiences of students and faculty members in three cities: Edmonton (Canada), Ternopil (Ukraine) and Talca (Chile).
The study has three objectives: To describe faculty and student responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in Edmonton, Ternopil and Talca; to describe the preventive and control measures implemented at the city level for managing the COVID-19 pandemic; and to analyse the health system response to the COVID-19 pandemic in each city and country.
The principle investigator, Dr. Elizabeth Burgess-Pinto, is the Chair in International Health. You can contact her to learn more about this project.
Community initiatives
Student research assistants, community engagement projects, international partnerships—the benefits of our activities are felt at individual, local and international levels.
This initiative aims to determine the capacity of and educational opportunities available to emerging and established Ukrainian artists in Alberta. Working closely with Dr. Olenka Bilash, president of the Ukrainian Foundation for College Education, URDC conducts research that includes surveys, interviews and focus groups with Ukrainian artists and fine arts organizations in Alberta, with the intent of gaining a deeper understanding of this artistic community.
Supported by a MacEwan student researcher, the study aims to investigate the current resources and perceived needs of the Ukrainian arts sector in Alberta. Findings and recommendations will be used to influence improvements and support this cultural community
You can learn more about this project by contacting URDC's director, Larisa Hayduk.
Throughout 2021, the Ukranian Resource and Development Centre and the Alberta Council for Ukrainian Arts (ACUA), with support from the Alberta branch of the Ukrainian Museum of Canada, will celebrate and explore the role of textiles in the Ukrainian-Canadian community. Called Threads that Connect, the series of events kicks off with the unveiling of a textile exhibition on February 14, followed by monthly lectures, artist demonstrations, virtual workshops and a fashion show that features historic clothing, stage costuming, retro graduation and wedding attire, and a clothing collection curated by Ukrainian designer, Olena Romanova.
Threads That Connect is curated by Larisa Sembaliuk Cheladyn, a third-generation Ukrainian-Canadian artist who has been immersed in Ukrainian culture and arts her entire life. With programming that is accessible to people of all backgrounds and people from around the world, the exhibition gives Larisa the opportunity to focus on textiles of the past and present, sharing the narratives that connect the Ukrainian communities in Ukraine and Canada.
The Ukrainian Resource and Development Centre at MacEwan University launched the research project Local Narratives: The Lives, Legacies, and Locales of Edmonton’s Ukrainian Canadian Community in the fall of 2021. Local Narratives aims to document and preserve the experiences, memories, and knowledge held by members of the Ukrainian Canadian community in Edmonton through oral history interviews. These stories enrich existing archives with information that would not otherwise be documented: stories that are told casually, in the midst of conversation, or in passing; stories that highlight remarkable activities that are not celebrated enough; reflections on accomplishments and challenges; or perhaps, stories that are difficult to tell.
