The road to peace between the Soviet Union and the West was a long and winding one with many landmarks along the way. Most think the process toward peace began in the Gorbachev era, but true historians tend to consider a meeting in Glassboro, New Jersey as one of the seminal events in the process.
A possible confrontation loomed between the United States and the Soviet Union because the two superpowers favored opposing sides in the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War. There was a public demand for a summit meeting to address the crisis, but a neutral venue was necessary. In June 1967, with Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin in New York to address the United Nations, President Lyndon B. Johnson asked New Jersey Gov. Richard J. Hughes to suggest a site for such a meeting. Hughes offered Glassboro State College, located approximately halfway between New York and Washington.
 On June 23 and 25, Johnson and Kosygin spent more than 7 1/2 hours in Hollybush Mansion, the ancestral home donated by the Whitney family to the college, discussing ways and means to head off nuclear war. While the two leaders held one-on-one meetings in the library, at the same time other world-famous Soviet and American statesmen met in the Hollybush living room. Included were Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko, Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin, Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy and W. Averell Harriman. The talks were successful, and Johnson dubbed the relaxation of conflicts between the two countries and the promise of good future relations "the Spirit of Hollybush."
Today there is no longer a Soviet Union, but instead the Commonwealth of Independent States. And there is no longer a Glassboro State College. In its place is a renamed and reinvigorated Rowan University. Now what were Glassboro State and that part of the Soviet Union that has become a free and independent Ukraine have chosen the 40th anniversary of the meetings at Hollybush to forge new ties that may help to make the future brighter for both the country and the university.
In the 40 years since the Hollybush meetings, the events leading to the Soviet Union becoming the Commonwealth of Independent States are well-known. Those same 40 years have brought equally important changes to the host of the Hollybush meetings, Glassboro State College.
The most major change occurred in July 1992, when industrialist Henry Rowan and his wife, Betty, donated $100 million to the institution, then the largest gift ever given to a public college or university in the history of higher education. Later that year, the school changed its name to Rowan College of New Jersey. The college achieved university status in 1997 and changed its name to Rowan University.
The large Rowan family donation was important, but more important has been the progressive and effective ways that Rowan University has used the first gift of $100 million and a later grant of $50 million. Rowan is now divided into six academic colleges: Business, Communication, Education, Engineering, Fine & Performing Arts, and Liberal Arts & Sciences, a graduate school and the College of Professional and Continuing Education. Rowan's nearly 10,000 students may select from among 36 undergraduate majors, seven teacher certification programs, 26 master's degree programs and a doctoral program in educational leadership.
But it is not just on its own campus that Rowan has chosen to aggressively improve and expand. Through joint efforts of its School of Business and its College of Professional and Continuing Education, Rowan has begun outreach to play its part in satisfying the worldwide demand for top quality business education.
Just a few weeks ago, a team of faculty members from Rowan arrived in Donetsk, one of the greatest industrial centers of Ukraine, for the first of what is expected to be a continuing series of seminars to teach widely recognized management concepts, the Lean Management program that has become famous worldwide after use by such pioneers in best management practices as Toyota and Motorola.
"We view the investment of Rowan University's expertise in business education in Ukraine as a logical extension of the legacy of Rowan's historical role in the development of peaceful relations between our two societies. The spirit of Hollybush is alive in Rowan's College of Professional and Continuing Education commitment to the development of the emerging Ukrainian market economy," said Dr. Horacio A. Sosa, Dean of Rowan's College of Professional and Continuing Education.
The program, best known under the name Six Sigma, allows in-service mid-level managers to acquire knowledge in a concentrated fashion that might take months to learn in a standard classroom setting.
Sponsored by the Donetsk Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and in cooperation with Sterling Business School of Ukraine, the Rowan faculty members spent two days in very intense training of a group of more than 40 Donetsk region managers and supervisors. The training methods, which include not only lectures but also role play simulations, were new to most of the students, but they soon grasped and embraced them and showed their appreciation of the pace of the training.
"On my recent trip to Ukraine I found the clients for our Six Sigma training open, enthusiastic, and committed to the concept of quality as a maxim of business management. The group in Donetsk worked very hard and digested everything available from our training team. It was a great experience and I look forward to additional opportunities to work with the business leaders of Ukraine," said Dr. William Stieber, head of the Rowan academic team said after completion of the training sessions.
John F. Sheetz, Rowan's director of distance learning, added, "Our recent pilot project in partnership with the Donetsk Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Sterling Business School is
the beginning of what we believe will be a viable distance learning opportunity for Rowan and our Ukrainian partners."
At the end of two very intensive days of instruction, the students were given certificates attesting to their completion of the first phase of the Six Sigma training cycle. Most students showed enthusiasm for a continuation of the training cycle and some even asked questions about further educational opportunities on Rowan main campus at Glassboro.
One of the persons most enthusiastic about the training was Donetsk Chamber President Gennady Chizhikov, who said, "We at the Donetsk Chamber of Commerce and Industry are looking forward to continuing to be a player in the development of a series of business oriented seminars and training programs in cooperation with our new partners. Professional development is a need that is steadily growing in the Donbas. We are extremely pleased that we could partner with Rowan University and Sterling Business School to offer this high level Six Sigma management training here in Donetsk, the industrial capital of Ukraine."
When President Johnson spoke at the end of the Glassboro meetings about the "Spirit of Hollybush," probably no one who heard his statement could have imagined the changes ahead and a time when the road from Glassboro to Donetsk would be very short indeed.
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