In November and December of last year, Mr Temur Matkurbonov visited the Geoecology department for training in the field of laboratory analytics. This is where the idea of cooperation in field and laboratory training for students was developed. Dorothee Kley and Dr. Michael Zierdt travelled to Uzbekistan in the first decade of May for initial exploratory discussions. The trip had three concrete goals. The first was to find out whether lecturers at Urgench University would be interested in such cooperation in the field of student training. Secondly, the conditions on site for laboratory and field measurement training were to be discussed. Thirdly, the question of communication had to be elicited, or in short: in which language can German lecturers and Uzbek students speak to each other.
The visit was very warm and very well organised. At the beginning, a meeting was arranged with all lecturers from the geoscientific faculties and institutes who were interested in cooperation. Here, the German lecturers were able to present their ideas and there were lively discussions about possibilities for cooperation in student training. In the further course, laboratories and field measuring stations could be visited. Contact with students proved to be somewhat difficult, as both English and Russian language skills are very limited. Finally, there was a meeting with the rector Bakhrom Abdullaev at which the importance of the internationalisation of teaching was emphasised.
Concrete further steps were not agreed upon at first. However, both sides agreed to look for ways and means to enable a visit of some Uzbek lecturers and students to Halle to test the possibility of joint teaching with laboratory and field measurement methods within the framework of a summer school.
