Former AUM professor helps with Ukraine’s ‘Road to Recovery’

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, retired Auburn University at Montgomery (AUM) professor Roger Ritvo felt compelled to reach out to his former students at Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) to offer comfort and support.

“I received a grant from the AUM Research Council in 2017 to spend three months at Ukrainian Catholic University conducting research and teaching courses in leadership and strategic management,” Ritvo said.

“Whenever you teach — no matter where you teach — you’re always learning something new. I learned a whole lot from students back then and about what organizations and businesses are like in a post-Soviet country. I loved every minute of it, and wanted to know how my former students were doing after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”

Watching the Russo-Ukrainian War unfold thousands of miles away from him, Ritvo sent emails to the students he taught in his UCU courses hoping to receive replies. With each reply he received, his fond memories of Ukraine quickly turned into the sobering realization of the war’s immense impact on Ukrainian citizens.

For some, the ongoing war had claimed their loved ones, friends and homes.

Others had watched helplessly as male relatives became one of thousands drafted into the Armed Forces of Ukraine to fight on the frontlines of the war.

“I mostly heard from women who were my students because most of the men have been drafted to fight in the mountains,” Ritvo said. “They are mostly scared but determined to see Ukraine stand and win the war because it’s important to their survival.”

With the faces of the war freshly ingrained in his mind, Ritvo months later didn’t hesitate to accept an invitation from UCU to teach Ukrainian students for a second time.

“My decision to teach again at UCU started with the fact that I enjoyed my first experience there, and I feel connected to Ukrainian Catholic University and its high standards,” he said. “I’ve always thought of going back.”

Ritvo, a former vice chancellor and College of Business professor at AUM, is currently one of seven international faculty teaching UCU’s newly launched English-language course “Road to Recovery,” which was created to search for solutions to Ukraine’s renewal.

Enlisted professors for the virtual course are from Harvard University, Syracuse University, Stanford University, University of Oxford, the University of Notre Dame and its Nanovic Institute, and the University of Colorado, where Ritvo currently teaches. The international mentors are experts in the fields of jurisprudence, the politics of security, design, business, investigative journalism, management, and sustainable economic development.

As part of the course, each faculty member is collaborating with a small group of students on “rebuilding projects” that will be presented to the Ukrainian government and international officials as a guide for organizations and business to rebuild after the war, Ritvo said.

“The war is impacting them personally; it’s not something in the distance,” he said of UCU students and faculty who are studying and working as they deal with the effects of a war that has left many Ukrainians without access to food, water, electricity, and living in constant fear.

When UCU developed the course in March 2023, the university wanted a seminar that would be practical about Ukraine’s road to recovery now and after the war and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression ends, Ritvo said.

Modeled after a seminar designed by a Stanford University professor, UCU’s course is organized around different topics such as regional planning, national security, organizational leadership, and legal system reform.

“While selecting international experts in these areas, somehow someone remembered me and I was asked teach the section of the course in management and organizational leadership,” Ritvo said. “From there we taught a seminar to 50 students who selected professors to collaborate with them in an area. Seven students chose to work with me via Zoom to research organizational leadership and decision making within a Ukrainian organization.”

In the one-semester course, Ritvo said his students are applying course content to a real-world organization. His students have selected the United Humanitarian Front, a Ukrainian organization that is raising money for non-military aid to soldiers and the people of Ukraine during the war.

“The key concept here is service learning for students,” Ritvo said. “I use this model in every course I teach. The goal is to work with an organization and provide a report to them on their best practices and areas to improve. In December 2023, each student group will make a presentation to the university, the organization, and the Ukraine government. This will allow students to apply the concepts and models from our class.”

Teaching the course is just one component of helping Ukraine’s road to recovery for him, Ritvo said. His second time teaching in Ukraine has also required him to be more compassionate as a professor.

“The university has lost several students in the Russia-Ukraine conflict,” he said. “It’s not just a war on the other side of the country. While I don’t go to war zones, I want to be supportive of UCU and its students. The fact they remembered my work there from years ago, it was nice to be able to connect with them again.”

About Roger Alan Ritvo

Roger Alan Ritvo was hired at AUM in 1997 as vice chancellor of academic and student affairs. At AUM, he also served as a professor in the College of Business where he taught management courses. In 2017, he retired from AUM but continued to teach graduate courses in health policy, leadership, and health administration at AUM as a Distinguished Professor Emeritus. Ritvo is currently a professor of management at the University of Colorado Denver’s Business School. He holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Western Reserve University, an MBA in health care administration and policy from George Washington University, and a doctorate in organizational development from Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management.