PRESIDENT OF KYRGYZSTAN AWARDS MEDAL TO BMC PROFESSOR

President Askar Akaev of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan has presented Bryn Mawr College Professor of Russian and Second Language Acquisition Dan Davidson with the Kyrgyz State Presidential Medal of Honor in recognition of Davidson's extraordinary contribution to education in the former Soviet republic.

Davidson, a 29-year veteran of the Bryn Mawr faculty who is also the president and co-founder of the American Councils for International Education, has played a major role in shaping the Kyrgyz Republic's educational system since the nation gained independence in 1991. Akaev's award cites Davidson's contribution to academic and educational exchanges — and in particular his work on a new system of standardized tests for university admissions. The new testing scheme, which was funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, replaced an old system that "had become subject to patronage and serious problems of corruption," Davidson explains, "keeping many rural and less affluent Kyrgyz school graduates from applying to universities at all."

For nearly three decades, Davidson has fostered exchanges between Bryn Mawr and the Russophone world through the American Council of Teachers of Russian, a division of the American Councils. He was an important consultant in the process of educational reform in the post-Soviet republics, serving as co-chair of International Task Forces for the Transformation of the Humanities and Social Sciences in cooperation with the Ministries of Education of Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, a project funded by the Soros Foundation. Both undergraduate and graduate students in Bryn Mawr's Russian program study the languages, literatures and cultures of the former Soviet republics.

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