Mississippi State welcomes third Uzbek delegation

The representatives of several Uzbekistan universities arrived Nov. 7. The following day, they began a wide-ranging tour that includes information-sharing workshops on campus and side trips to the Delta, Jackson and Hinds County, West Point, Tupelo, and the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway.

A former Soviet Union republic, Uzbekistan is a California-sized nation of nearly 22 million people.

Over the past year, three Uzbek delegations have come to Mississippi State. Last fall, a group of high-level government officials made the first visit. They were followed in April by nine university administrators and faculty members.

In each case, the visitors were welcomed by lead host Garry D. Smith, head of the department of management and information services. The department, along with the Office of International Programs and the Agribusiness Institute, is coordinating the Uzbek exchange program with the U.S. Information Agency.

In 1992, Smith was among a team of university leaders who spent nearly a month making an economic assessment tour of several former communist states in Central Asia. Follow-up trips were made by Smith and other faculty in the colleges of Business and Industry and Agriculture and Home Economics, as well as the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station and Cooperation Extension Service.

Uzbek educators on this latest reciprocal visit include administrators and faculty members in the fields of computing and computer science, management, political science, foreign languages, economics, and agriculture, among others. Their visit concludes Dec. 5.