The Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) is a private institution, the first Catholic University to be opened in a former Soviet republic, located in L’Viv, in Western Ukraine. Officially founded in its current form in 2002, UCU serves approximately 2000 students in six colleges.
UCU and DePaul collaborated in recent years on joint GLE projects and co-facilitation of Global Conversations. In Fall 2021, the GLE team and a team at UCU started planning a joint virtual exchange initiative that was supposed to include a working visit to L’Viv with a group of DePaul faculty, interested in implementing GLE projects with UCU partners. The Russian invasion that started in late February 2022 obviously changed everything.
Shortly after the start of the war, our partners at UCU reached out with a request for help. It was crucial, in their view, that no effort be spared to continue to provide quality higher education to a generation that will be responsible for the reconstruction of the country, once this absurd and devastating war is over. To this end, taking advantage of their still relatively safe location in L’Viv, UCU started to coordinate efforts with a number of other Ukrainian universities, whose students were now dispersed across eastern Europe and whose facilities had already been severely compromised by bombing and shelling.
DePaul was uniquely positioned to be able to provide concrete assistance in this situation. Our Spring quarter was just about to begin, with more than 30% of classes offered in various online and flex modalities.
With the Support of DePaul’s Provost and President, the division of Global Engagement and Online Learning took the lead in putting in place the needed logistical support to host Ukrainian students in online classes in Spring Quarter.