Ukrainian experience from BSPU: lecture in Melbourne

A public lecture by Ukrainian scientists was held at the University of Melbourne (Australia).

The lecture “University without walls: Wellbeing lessons from Ukrainian war zones” by Yana Sychikova and Igor Lyman gathered over 500 representatives of the Australian educational community and caused a significant resonance.

Talked about mental health, educational transformations, exchange of experience, finding solutions to modern challenges in higher education, including stress, burnout and the impact of crises and, of course, about the experience of Ukrainian universities during the war.

The lecture was part of a series of events organized in cooperation with the Future Campus platform and the university’s Faculty of Education. According to the founder of this platform Tim Winkler, who covered the event in the “What We Learned” column, Ukrainian researchers reached out not only to an academic audience, but also to the wider public during the week through media and public speeches.

In his column, Tim Winkler highlighted several key lessons, theses of the lecture that go beyond the Ukrainian context:

• attention needs to be paid to supporting the mental health of participants in the educational process in conditions of prolonged stress;
• the importance and universality of the problems of uncertainty and burnout for the entire academic community, despite the different scales of crises, were noted;
• postponing decisions even for stable systems creates risks of accumulating structural problems;
• rethinking goals in conditions of crises and vulnerabilities can promote development;
• student-centered education as a priority, even with limited resources;
• partnership – from formality to deep exchange of experience.

The event caused a strong emotional response: some of the audience could not hold back their tears. The reaction of Kwong Lee Dow, an emeritus professor at the university, who exclaimed “Bravo!” at the end of the lecture was especially telling. According to the dean of the Faculty of Education, Marek Tesar, such a reaction from one of the most authoritative representatives of the university is exceptional.

Based on materials from Yana Sychikova’s Facebook page and Tim Winkler’s column in Future Campus